


It Was On Sale

by HazelDomain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blood and Torture, Body Image, Bondage, Bonding, Breathplay, Cock Piercing, Community: spnkink_meme, Creature Castiel, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cutting, Dean is In Over His Head, Death, Domestic, Drugged Sex, Gang Rape, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, Legal Drama, M/M, Master/Slave, Multi, Nipple Piercings, Nipple Torture, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Violence, Non-Sexual Bondage, Oral Sex, Owner Dean, POV Castiel, POV Dean Winchester, POV Sam Winchester, Painplay, Piercings, Psychic Bond, Rape, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Slave Castiel, Slave Sam, Teen Sex, Torture, Training, Urban Fantasy, Violent Sex, Voyeurism, Whipping, bad guy death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-05-21 04:03:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 51
Words: 131,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6037312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelDomain/pseuds/HazelDomain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's been hunting solo ever since his dad died, and he knows damn well he's running on borrowed time. The simple solution was to buy a slave, someone who could watch his back and help with the heavy lifting. The man he finds is young, healthy, obedient, and inexplicably cheap. And that's just the beginning.   <br/>Dean figured he'd deal with the catch when he found it, but he's a little busy with screaming ghosts, crazy doctors, lying housewives, geeky witches, sociopathic plutocrats, mind melds, celebratory pie, surprise blowjobs, and oh yeah, a surly angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this request: http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/106950.html?thread=40363462#t40363462

“There’s no way you would take four hundred?”

“He’s worth at least five.”

Dean looked the dark-skinned slave up and down, taking in the man’s impressive musculature.

“I’m not arguing with you there. But four’s what I’ve got and I don’t see any other buyers.”

The slaver waved dismissively in Dean’s direction.

“The day is young, and he is a good worker. I’d rather keep him than sell him for so low a price.”

Dean looked the slave over again, weighing his options. He could pay five, but it was more than a year’s savings, and would nearly wipe him out. And he needed to make the decision today. If he went home empty handed today, it would be another six months of solo hunts before the next market.

“Ah! This is precisely what I was looking for!”

A short man in a shining purple tunic pushed through the crowd, gesturing to the slave in question.

“He is exactly what I need to complete my collection. I must have him. What is your price? Name it.”

The slaver held up a hand, gesturing for the excitable collector to wait. The shorter man stared impatiently from under his purple silk cap.

“I have already been engaged in negotiations for this slave. You will need to wait until they are completed.”

“Nonsense. I will pay whatever you wish.”

“Not to skip ahead,” Dean interrupted, “but you’re trying way too hard to cover your accent. Which matches his accent.” He inclined his head toward the slaver. “Coupled with the flaming-red hair you’re trying to hide under that hat, I’d guess you two are... brothers? Cousins, at the very least. It’s my first time buying a slave, but it’s not my first _day on Earth,_ guys.”

The two men exchanged guilty glances. The slave, to his credit, was doing an admirable job of hiding a smirk. Finally, the slaver spoke up.

“If he’s still here at close of market, I’ll sell him for four.”

Dean extended his hand. The slaver shook it.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

 

Two hours later, Dean’s slave was still up for grabs. He’d meandered his way around the barracks twice, reaffirming his choice. There were at least three other capable fighters in between the harem and domestic slaves, but none of them were as intimidating or solidly built as the slave he’d chosen.

He checked his watch. Two hours to go.

A group of women wandered past, giggling to themselves. Window shoppers. Dean watched, bemused, as one of them sidled up to his slave and tentatively laid a hand on the bare skin of his muscled abdomen. The slave’s eyes flicked to her face, and he gave her a rakish grin. Her friends howled with laughter. The slaver scowled, and the women moved off, still twittering. Dean rolled his eyes.  

He checked his watch. One hour, fifty-eight minutes.

He wandered out of the main barracks, heading vaguely in the direction of the food trucks. With any luck he could pick up something deep-fried, preferably on a stick.

Dean dodged a couple kids, almost stepping on a trailing streamer as they raced toward the livestock pens. Dean had it on good authority that there were lambs in there. That had been his favorite part of the market as a kid.

He paused for a moment, remembering the days he’d spent here with his father. Twice a year, he and John had wandered the fairgrounds, picking up the strange and obscure items they needed to do their work. They’d pack the car full of herbs, crystals, bones and (if Dean was good,) saltwater taffy or fudge. The impala had smelled weird for days afterward, but that was the job.

He paid a vendor for something greasy and hot and covered in powdered sugar, which came wrapped in a napkin for ease of snarfing. He wandered as he ate it, taking in the performers and animals and games of skill or chance.

At the far end of the midway was the secondary slave barracks, colloquially known as the ‘cheap seats.’ Dean stood in the darkened doorway, not sure he really wanted to venture into this building. This is where slaves ended up when they were ill, or old, or violent.

Dean sidled down the main alley, hands in his pockets. In the main building, the merchants had approached him, asked if he was after something special. Here, no one spoke to him. No questions. Better for business.

He walked past several stalls where women lounged in various states of undress. Some of them winked as he passed, or suckled gently at a fingertip. The prostituting of slaves was illegal, but the slavers working these buildings were known for their generous return policies.

This building had always made him vaguely uncomfortable.

He turned back toward the door, eager to get back into the bright sunlight.

And then he turned back.

Something in the back corner had caught his eye.

Dean blinked in the gloom, making sure he was seeing what he thought.

The slave on the floor was large. Taller than Dean, probably, though it was hard to tell in his current configuration. The man knelt on the dirty cement, knees forced apart by a metal spreader bar. He was naked, having been denied even the token clothing usually afforded to slaves for sale. His wrists were shackled to his ankles, forcing his shoulders back. The words “damaged goods’ had been scrawled hastily across the lean muscle of his chest, in what looked like sharpie. His head hung down, face obscured by the long dark hair falling across his features. It was hard to tell without seeing his face, but Dean would guess he was in his mid twenties.  

Dean glanced at the slave’s keeper. She was a slave herself, sent to supervise the sale by a master who, unsurprisingly, was not interested in spending the day in the dingy second barracks.

“What’s his story?”

The woman regarded him with dark eyes. She was pretty, in a thorny, sarcastic kind of way.

“Boss wants him gone.”

“Why?”

She shrugged.

“Rumor around the house is, he clocked him one in the jaw.” She cracked her gum, not breaking eye contact. “But I don’t gossip.”

“So he’s violent?”

“Doesn’t say so on his paperwork.”

Dean glanced back at the kneeling man. The law required certain disclosures, like whether slave had an illness or a history of violence. If the slave had attacked his master, it would have to be on his paperwork… unless he wasn’t above lying.

“How much do you want for him?”

“Two hundred. But I’m allowed to negotiate as low as one fifty.”

Dean quirked an eyebrow. The woman’s expression didn’t change.

“You spend a lot of time negotiating?”

“When he’s gone, I get to leave.” She cracked her gum again. “Seems like a win-win.”

Dean turned his attention back to the slave on the floor. It was too damn dark in here. He pulled out his phone, thumbing on the flashlight app.

He squatted down to the other man’s level, moving the light over his body. The position looked uncomfortable, but the bonds were expertly done. No sign of binding damage on the hands or feet. His shoulders and back were crossed by pale red marks. He’d been punished recently, but nothing severe enough to break the skin. His arms were similarly striped, but there were no scars which would indicate a history of violent treatment.

Dean ran his fingers lightly over the slave’s chest and belly, feeling for injuries. The man tensed slightly, his breath stilling when he felt Dean’s hands on him. It wasn’t the wince that would indicate a broken bone or internal injury.

“’m not gonna hurt you,” Dean said softly, moving the light over the man’s legs. He didn’t see any bruising or serious deformities, though it’s possible that the man had an old injury hidden by his immobility.

Something glinted in the light, and Dean realized with a start that the man’s cock had been pierced. A metal ball rested at the base of the slit, the other presumably hidden beneath the flaccid member.

“Kinky,” Dean muttered, and then he was looking into the most brilliant hazel eyes he’d ever seen in his life. The slave was glaring daggers at him, his eyes practically sparking. If it weren’t for the thick leather gag, Dean had no doubt he’d be learning some brand new swear words.

“Cool your jets, man. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

The slave huffed at him, nostrils flaring. Dean turned back to the keeper.

“So what’s the catch? He’s young, he’s healthy, he’s ‘not violent.’ He’s worth easily three times what you’re asking. What’s wrong with him?”

“Couple things.” The woman cracked her gum, not sparing a glance for the man on the floor. “First off, boss had him sterilized. Won’t matter much for your plans, I’m guessing, but it’s on his paperwork.”

She held up another finger.

“Second, he’s got a real attitude problem. He’s not as bad as he used to be, but nobody’s ever gonna describe him as ‘obedient.’”

She ticked off the third finger.

“And third off, he doesn’t talk.”

“Why not?”

“Mostly as a result of point two. Boss got tired of his sass and had his vocal cords cut.”

Dean stared at her in horror.

“He _what?_ ”

“Meant just what I said. Do you want him or not?”

“That still doesn’t explain the price.”

“So walk away, slugger. He’ll end up in a work camp, see if I care.”

Dean palmed the wad of bills in his pocket, making sure they were still there. He should walk away from this… whatever it was that was happening here. Forget the weird keeper and her silent, damaged goods slave.

He crouched back down, putting himself at eye level with the slave. Gingerly, he pushed the matted locks out of the man’s face, meeting his eyes.

“Can you fight?”

Slowly, the slave nodded. Dean turned back to the woman.

“One fifty. I’ll take him.”


	2. Chapter 2

The keeper flipped Dean the keys.

“I’m taking the shackles back with me,” she said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. Dean derailed that train of thought before it had a chance to leave the station. The woman was attractive enough, but something about her demeanor was distinctly unnerving.

Dean knelt behind the bound slave, fumbling with the keys in the low light. He released his wrists first, and the man leaned forward with a sigh, taking his weight onto his knuckles. It left Dean in a rather compromising position, because even in the dark, he wasn’t completely blind, and the man’s bare back was arching in a way that was hard to ignore. He licked his lips.

“Right?” the keeper asked, winking at Dean. Dean scowled. He quickly removed the ankle cuffs and tossed them to the keeper.

The spreader bar didn’t have a key. It was held on by buckled leather straps, which the slave was making short work of. Dean was a little worried that the man was going to make a run for it, but he simply dropped the metal bar and rose to his feet.

Dean was used to being the tallest person in any given interaction, but this man had at least three inches on him. He was, in every sense of the word, a giant.

A giant who had what could be described as an ‘attitude problem.’

Dean suddenly wondered if he had made a good decision with this purchase.

The man fumbled at the back of his neck, pulling the gag loose and tossing it down the aisle into the shadows. He glared at the keeper, as if daring her to say something. She scoffed.

“Yeah, I didn’t want that back. Well, you two have fun getting to know each other.”

She passed Dean a thick manila envelope. “Everything we know about him is in there. Anything else, you’ll have to ask him.”

She winked, turned on her heel, and stalked out of the building before Dean could say another word. He turned slowly to the man he had just purchased. The slave had adopted a defensive stance, and was eyeing him like he thought Dean might be about to bite. Dean took a breath.

“Let’s get out of here.”    

 

 

As a general rule, it was rare to see slaves being led around naked. It tended to raise eyebrows. So when Dean stepped out of the barracks with a dirty, naked giant in tow, people started to stare. First order of business, then, was to get gigantor some pants. Unfortunately, they were at a market bazaar and not a Big and Tall, so Dean made do with the first thing he could find. That happened to be a pair of loose sleeping pants and a dark t-shirt which the merchant assured him was made completely out of bamboo. Dean didn’t give a fuck if it was made of actual puppy fur, as long as it got people to stop staring at them. The man was still barefoot, but there wasn’t much Dean could do about that at the moment.

“You want some food?”

The slave nodded. Dean set off in the direction of the midway, but paused when he realized the man wasn’t following him.

“Dude. Food’s this way.”

The man shook his head, inclining it in the direction of the market.

“There’s nothing over there but rabbit food. Trust me. The good stuff’s this way.”

The giant stood his ground, inclining his head once again toward the market. Dean rolled his eyes. Fine. Rabbit food it was.  

 

 

Dean had eaten some delicious things in his life. Once, when he was fourteen, he’d eaten a cherry pie so perfect that he’d had a wet dream about it later. In his adulthood, he’d become a connoisseur of cheeseburgers, and could show you the five greatest burgers in the country on a map. He was a man with a deep and lasting appreciation of food, and even so, he didn’t think he’d ever enjoyed anything as much as the man in front of him was enjoying this peach.

The slave held it with both hands, his eyes closed, not so much eating it as making love to it with his mouth. Juice ran down his face and hands, and when his tongue darted out to lap it off his palm, Dean saw that it had been pierced as well.

He’s sure he’d be painfully aroused if he weren’t so busy wondering how long it had been since the man had eaten.

“You want another one?” he asked when the first had been devoured down to the pit. The man nodded gratefully. Dean handed him a number of small bills.

“Go get whatever you like. If you don’t like the stuff at the midway, you won’t like the stuff I’ve got back at my place.”

The man eyed him suspiciously. He took the money slowly, like he was expecting something sudden and painful to happen once he did.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Dean said, and settled back against the picnic table. He turned his attention to where a nearby couple was feeding perfectly good French fries to seagulls, or as Dean called them, sky rats. He very deliberately watched the couple and the birds, not watching the slave walk away. He’d come back or he wouldn’t. If Dean had bought a runner, he wanted to know now, not when he was neck-deep in vampires and waiting for backup that wasn’t coming.

They both knew he wouldn’t get far, if he ran. The barcode on his forearm identified him as a slave. Dean hadn’t registered him, didn’t plan to if the slave didn’t return, so when he was eventually caught he’d be dealt with by the state. Dean would be out the money, but he wouldn’t be eaten by monsters. Sometimes, you gotta take the big gambles.

Some teens came by with a box of chocolate bars, some school fundraiser or something. Dean bought two of them, figuring he’d eat both if his giant companion’s weird eating habits extended to a moratorium on chocolate.

The couple on the next bench ran out of French fries and left.

No sign of the slave.

Should probably find out what his name is.

Dean checked his watch. He still had forty minutes until the market closed. He still had enough money to buy the slave he’d wanted originally, but he’d be counting out loose change by the time he was done.

A light touch on the shoulder brought him out of his thoughts, and his hand had dropped to the handle of his knife before he realized who it was.

“Got what you need?”

The man nodded.

“Ready to go home?”

The man paused, then nodded again.

 

The drive back passed in what Dean hoped was a companionable silence. What do you say to a mute man you just purchased? It’s not like he could make small talk.

When they’d reached the car, the man had slid into the backseat without prompting, buckling his seatbelt and waiting patiently. The paper grocery sack sat on the bench seat next to him.

Dean’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, looking quickly away when he saw that the other man was staring intently at him. His brow was furrowed, like he was trying to figure something out.

“So, uh, I’m Dean. Dean Winchester. I’m a hunter.”

Another quick glance in the rearview mirror. No change.

“You said you could fight, and that’s good, because I’ve been doing a lot of solo gigs lately and I’m getting my ass kicked a lot. I figure I need a backup dancer, or I’m gonna end up dead.”

Was that a flicker of amusement? Maybe.

“It’s a dangerous gig, I’m not gonna lie to you. But, the pay’s good and it’s work worth doing. Saving people. It’s kind of my family’s business.”

Was. Was the family business. Back when there was a family. Dean forced a casual grin onto his face.

“So what do you say? You in?”

The man blinked at him, then rolled his shoulders in a dismissive shrug.

Right. Slave.

“Look, give it six months, okay? If it’s not your thing, I’ll take you back to the market and get you an owner that doesn’t kill monsters for a living. You can be a nanny or something.”

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes and turning his attention out the window. The countryside flew past, all cornfields and telephone poles. Dean checked the rearview mirror a couple more times, but the man’s hazel eyes never strayed from the window.

 

 

“Home sweet home,” Dean announced, pulling up the gravel drive. “It’s not much, but it’s mine.”

The building was unique in that it was partially underground. Back in the fifties, Dean’s great-grandpa had decided that werewolves were less of a threat than the Russkies, and had built himself a bunker. Structurally, it was a bunch of old rail cars welded against the frame of a double-wide trailer, shoved up against the side of a bluff and covered with enough rocks and loose soil to protect the inhabitants from The Big One. Dean had grown up here, holding down the fort while his father and grandfather had gone on hunts. Dean knew the place inside and out. He’d hung the drywall himself, done a fair amount of the wiring, even painted the exterior one hot dull summer a couple years back.

Back when his grandfather had been alive, Dean had spent a lot of time here by himself, holding down the homestead while his father and grandfather went on hunts. He knew the surrounding countryside like the back of his hand, and more than one tree in the area bore the initials _D.W._

Dean realized he was daydreaming, car door half open, staring at the ramshackle building. The other man hadn’t moved from his place in the backseat, and was staring at him with a mix of curiosity and concern.

“Come on. Not getting any younger.”

When he reached the door, he turned back to make sure the other man was following him. He’d paused on the gravel drive, dirty and barefoot, holding the grocery sack that was all he had in the world, and damned if he didn’t look _small._

Dean unlocked the door and walked inside, flicking the lights on and gesturing for the man to follow him.

He kicked his boots off and dropped them by the door, and shucked off his light jacket. First order of business would be to get his new roommate some clothes. Scratch that. A shower. Then some clothes. And then an introduction to decent food. Clearly, something had gone seriously wrong in his dietary education.

The door was still standing open and the man was still standing on the porch just outside the door.

“What are you, a vampire? Get in here. Shut the door.”

Hazel eyes flicked up to meet his, and then the man steeled his shoulders and stepped across the threshold. The door swung lazily shut behind him. When it clicked shut, he blinked hard, steeling his shoulders and setting his gaze straight ahead.

And then he grasped his shirt by the collar and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion, folding it over his arm and setting it aside.

Dean’s confusion outweighed the time he had to process that action, because before he could even get a perplexed facial expression in place, the man’s hands had dropped to the drawstring of his pants.

“Hey, uh-“

The man was breathing slowly and deliberately and Dean was momentarily distracted by the way his stomach muscles were stretching and tensing, or the way the pants hung low on his hips-

“Pants. Um. Hey. Pants stay on. Dude? Dude. Pants stay on.”

His hands stilled on the drawstring, and then they were swiftly re-tying the knot. He kept his gaze focused on the far wall as he dropped to one knee, and then maneuvered until he was sitting back on his heels.

Dean blinked. He didn’t know what to do with this.

The man took a slow breath, closing his eyes. And then, very deliberately, licked his lips. He didn’t close his mouth, and Dean could see the piercing glinting on his tongue. Suddenly all he could think of was how it would feel to have the jewelry sliding along the underside of his cock.

With a start, Dean realized that’s what the slave was expecting.

“Whoa. No offense, but that’s not why I bought you, man. You can stand up.”

The man’s jaw snapped shut with an audible click, but he didn’t get up.

Dean had been in a lot of odd situations in his life. He and his father had once killed a succubus with a spell which required their own semen. It had been an unusually quiet hunt and they’d never spoken of it again. That had nothing on this.

“What’s your name?”

The man blinked at him.

Dean ducked into the kitchen, rummaging around in the scrap drawer until he found a notepad and a pen. And another pen. And finally, a pen that worked.

He carried his finds back to where the man was kneeling, presenting them like precious treasure.

“What’s your name?” He asked again. The man took the pad and pen, and stared at them for a long moment. He looked up at Dean. He looked back at the paper. And then, in large block letters, he wrote “ _SAM_.”

 

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Sam was in the shower (alone, thanks to all Dean’s willpower possibly augmented by a visit from an actual shoulder angel) and Dean was scrolling through hunter newsfeeds while waiting for macaroni to boil. There was a poltergeist about three hours away that was pestering a well-to-do family _very_ eager to be rid of it. The fee was a little higher than he would expect, but the family seemed desperate and the posting agent seemed convinced that it was real.

Water spilled onto the burner, letting Dean know that the food was ready. He’d made double and a half his usual amount. Sam didn’t look starved, but he didn’t look healthy, either. Plus, who knew what constitutes a normal portion size for someone that large.

He strained the al dente macaroni, adding the milk and cheese and separating it into bowls. He looked at them for a minute, sitting on the dining room table surrounded by newspaper clippings and old lore books. He went and dug an apple out of Sam’s bag, setting it next to the bowl. For some reason it made him feel better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Sam's POV. 
> 
> Let me know what's working and what isn't. This fic could go a lot of ways.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of past rape.
> 
> Soundtrack to this chapter is "We Are Golden" by Blacklight Dinner Party, because I listened to it on repeat for four hours while I wrote it.

It had been a long, long time since Sam had taken a shower. Even longer since he’d taken one alone. He knew he was a mess, and honestly it didn’t surprise him that Dean hadn’t wanted anything to do with him when they’d gotten home. He expected that would probably change once he was presentable again.

That was alright. Sam was confident in his abilities, and as far as masters went, Dean was one of the most attractive he’d ever been with. Strange, sure, but attractive.

Sam being in here was strange. Dean used these same facilities; that much was obvious by the half-empty bottle of body wash and the towel hanging on the rack. Dean had pulled a set of towels out of a closet for him, worn at the corners, but clean and soft. Sam had assumed that these were castoffs, but the towel hanging on the rack was in an identical state.

It probably didn’t mean anything. This was probably how slaves were treated by less affluent owners. Sam’s owners had always been wealthy, and the slaves they owned were restricted to the slave facilities. The furnishings had been sparse, and clearly different from the materials in the main house.

Sam’s clothes, back when he had been permitted to wear them, had been form-fitting and had certainly never had pockets.

Sam felt a little guilty when he thought about the pockets. He’d been grateful when Dean had bought him the clothing instead of leading him through the market naked. The pockets were probably an oversight brought about by necessity. But they came in handy when Dean had given him money and sent him to buy his own food.

Sam still had some of that money, paper bills wrapped tightly around the coins so they wouldn’t jingle and remind his owner that he was owed change.

After Dean left him alone in the bathroom, he pulled the money out and stared at it. He shouldn’t have it, and if he was caught, there’d be hell to pay.

By his count, there were four dollars and fifty-two cents.

He searched around the bathroom for somewhere to hide it. He opened the medicine cabinet as quietly as possible, casting glances at the unlocked door. He thought he could hear Dean out in the kitchen, but he didn’t know who else might live in the house. This might even be a test. He turned on the water to cover the sound.

The medicine cabinet was incredibly well stocked. The shelves were packed with bottles of alcohol, sterile saline, gauze pads and bandages, suture thread, individually packaged needles, forceps and scalpels.

Dean had said that hunting was a dangerous job. Apparently, he hadn’t been lying.

Sam’s eye landed on a scalpel. He was almost certain this was a test now. Nobody left weapons lying around where a slave could take them. Nobody.

He took one anyway, handling it gently so that the sterile packaging didn’t make any sound. He turned it over in his hands, thinking carefully. He couldn’t think of any immediate plan, and so he put it back. For now.

The money he hid in the bottom of a box of band-aids, packing the bandages back on top of it and placing it back in exactly the place he’d found it.

The water was running hot and he stripped off his clothes, avoiding the sight of himself in the mirror. He knew he was a mess. He didn’t need to look.

Dean had given him a washcloth, but he ignored it for now, letting the water cut through the layers of grime and sweat. His hair was the worst, tangled and greasy. He couldn’t even run his fingers through it, and the water that sluiced through it came away dark.

He wondered if he was allowed to use the soap.

It seemed likely, and after a moment of deliberation Sam decided that it was probably worth whatever punishment he’d have to endure if he was wrong. Dean didn’t seem like the kind of owner to go overboard on the beatings, and if he was, well. Better to know sooner than later.

Still, he winced at the sound the cap made when it snapped open. His eyes flicked to the door, but there was no sound from outside.

The soap was blue, and cold, and professed to smell like an ‘ocean breeze’ though Sam was almost certain that it didn’t. He rubbed it into his scalp and it quickly rose into a brownish-gray lather. It stung when it got into the cut on the side of his temple (his old master had been patient but not infinitely so) but otherwise felt heavenly. Sam worked at the areas where blood or mud had dried, rubbing it out of his hair in stiff flecks. The water carried them down his body, making light rivulets through the dark.

Soon he could run his fingers through his hair again. It was longer than it had been the last time he’d washed it. When he looked down at himself, he could see the ends just barely reaching his collarbones. It looked black against his skin, and he realized that he didn’t know what color it was now. It had been blonde when he was younger, but it had been rapidly darkening by the time he was sold.

He soaked the washcloth and then rubbed the bar soap against it. He didn’t know what this was supposed to smell like, but it didn’t smell like what they’d used at the last place, so he liked it.

He closed his eyes against the hot spray, and scrubbed vigorously at his face. It was one of the cleanest parts of him, since he’d rubbed at it whenever his hands were free. One of the last times he’d caught sight of himself, there had been tear tracks through the grime. He didn’t want people seeing that. So he made it a priority to rub his hands or shoulders against his cheeks whenever he had the mobility to do so.

He hoped there hadn’t been tracks when Dean had bought him, but he’d been in transport bindings for several days, so he probably wasn’t that lucky.

When the washcloth came away clean, he rubbed soap into it again, and began work on his neck and shoulders. There was an uncomfortable pulling feeling in his back, where the marks from the belt and cane weren’t quite healed. A little goodbye present, they’d said. Something to remember them by. He’d gotten through it by knowing he’d be sold soon. Whatever his next owner came up with, at least it wouldn’t be out of revenge.

More soap, and he started on his arms and chest. They were broad, not as strong as they’d once been, but still good enough to draw more than one appraising eye. He had his looks to thank for most of his current circumstances. His first owner had taken one look at Sam’s departing father, and immediately declared that if Sam got half that big, he had a promising future in the fighting rings. They’d trained him in hand combat, with knives, even giving him a few lessons with a sword. But then Sam had grown up and they realized that he wasn’t just big, he was _pretty,_ and that’s when his training had changed.

He rubbed the cloth absently over the tattoo on his left shoulder. It had been done when his training was completed, the trainer’s signature marked on his body as proof of his skills. His last owner had had it altered, covered with a meaningless starburst. Sam suspected that there were some documents missing from his file, too.

He washed his back as best as he could, then went to work on his feet and legs. He’d been barefoot and blindfolded through most of the transport to market, so it was only luck that had kept him from stepping on something sharp.

The water was starting to run cold, and he realized he had to stop procrastinating. He soaped up the washcloth again and ran it over his groin, cleaning his cock and balls and grimacing as he started to get hard.

“ _Stop it,_ ” he ordered his cock silently. His trainer, Ruby, had joyfully informed him that he was ‘beautifully receptive’ and had done everything in her power to accentuate this feature in him. He hated it. He knew what was expected of him and he did it, but he’d gotten really tired of hearing his owners and their friends coo over how much he ‘liked it.’

He didn’t like it.

He flicked himself. The sting took a little of the perk out of his traitorous dick. It settled down completely when he knelt on the tile floor and tentatively examined the area behind his balls. It hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as he had been expecting. After he’d been bound for transport, his last owner had brought some friends by for a little goodbye party. They’d been rough, but Sam was experienced. The first had gone in dry, which had caused most of the damage, but he’d come inside, slicking the way for the men that followed.

He ran soapy fingers over the area, feeling for anything more serious than the general soreness and bruising that accompanied such activities. The soap burned, meaning that the skin was broken, but only a little, which meant he’d heal. It also meant that he’d have to be extra careful if Dean wanted him in the next few days. Sam was good with his mouth, so maybe if Dean called him to bed he’d be able to steer things in that direction. Maybe not. Most new owners spent their first night taking _everything_ for a test drive.

He stood and gave his body another cursory once-over, rinsing the soap off. The water had gotten cold enough to make him shiver, and he shut it off. He squeezed the water out of his hair and was just reaching for the towel when there was a knock on the door.

For a terrifying second, Sam thought he had somehow locked it by accident, but when he glanced at the door, he could see the bolt was set to the ‘open’ position. Dean _could_ open the door, he just hadn’t.

Sam shook the water off his hands, then crossed the room in two steps, opening the door and leaning one arm against the doorframe.

Dean blinked, like he’d expected someone else. He opened his mouth to say something, but a drop of water fell off Sam’s bangs and Dean’s eyes followed it. Sam could almost see the blood flowing out of his owner’s brain as the drop landed on his chest and trickled down his wet body. It came to a halt in the hollow of one bare hip. Dean licked his lip.

‘ _Didn’t buy you for that.’_

_Right._

Sam raised his chin, looking down at the other man with a knowing smile.

Dean’s eyes snapped back up to meet his.

“Uh, so I realized, you’ve only got the one set of clothes and you probably don’t want to put them back on until they’re clean, so I found these. They’re mine but they’re the biggest I’ve got and they’ll have to do until we get to a store. Okay?”

And he held a bundle of clothing out to Sam, who paused a second and then took them.

“Good. So. Food’s on the table when you’re done. And I might have a case. So. Uh. I’ll be… out there.”

And then he was gone down the hall.

Sam blinked.

Definitely weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who replied with questions and comments. I very much enjoy discussing this with you guys. 
> 
> This chapter was supposed to be up yesterday, but I accidentally forgot to sleep and I do not do my best writing (or talking) on 30 hours of consciousness. 
> 
> This is not Sam's entire backstory, (obv) but hopefully it gives you all a little idea of where he's coming from. 
> 
> Did most of the researching for this chapter using incognito mode. Slash writers seem to have a varied idea of how much damage results from anal rape, and I (stupidly) decided to use google to find out the truth for myself. Did a search for 'rape tearing' and google helpfully served me up a graphic crime scene photo of a little kid. 
> 
> So that's why the extent of Sam's injuries are completely made up out of my own head. 
> 
> And now I have a new disclaimer: Sam has been a slave since he was young. He was not molested or raped as a child. If any other slaves show up: they weren't molested as kids either. I'm not gonna describe it, I'm not gonna talk about it, it didn't happen. I promise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean go underwear shopping, have a fistfight in a Walmart parking lot.

“Real smooth, Winchester. Fuckin’ preteen girls everywhere wish they had your charm.” Dean shoved a log into the woodstove.

“ _I’ll be out there,_ ” he mimicked. “Christ.”

Dean Winchester was not a virgin. Not even close. He’d been picking up tail of all varieties since he was old enough to rent hotel rooms. That was ten years ago and it had been an interesting, colorful, _imaginative_ ten years, so he’s not sure why the sight of a drop of water on a dude’s stomach had just skyrocketed to the #1 position in his spank bank.

Probably something to do with the ‘come fuck me’ eyes the guy had been giving him when he’d looked up from said stomach.

Hadn’t the woman at the market said Sam had an attitude problem? He wasn’t a runaway, he cleaned up _nice,_ and he had no problem with sex. So what the hell was she talking about? Maybe he was a fucking nypho.

Dean remembered the envelope with Sam’s paperwork. It was still in the car. Maybe there was something in there?

He stood and checked his pants for the car keys, but his train of thought was totally derailed when Sam walked back into the kitchen.

The house (or fallout shelter, or what have you) was built with an open floor plan. The front door opened into a living room circled on three sides with bookshelves. The furniture consisted of beat-up couches circling a flatscreen on a milk-crate throne. The couches were secondhand; the television was the second most expensive thing in the house, after the sound system. May it never be said that the Winchester men did not have their priorities sorted out.

A bar counter cut the room in half, separating the living room from the kitchen. A beat-up table sat in the middle of the kitchen linoleum, surrounded by three mismatched chairs. Right now, the table was covered with lore books, three newspapers, Sam’s macaroni, Dean’s laptop, two handguns, and the apple. It was a pretty typical state of affairs.

“That’s for you,” Dean said, gesturing at the bowl. “If it’s cold just pop it in the microwave for about thirty seconds. Always 30 seconds at a time. She’s a temperamental bitch.”

Sam surveyed the room, then picked up his macaroni and settled cross-legged in a corner of the living room. Dean’s jeans were too tight on him, and he had to do a little wiggle to get situated. The t-shirt was pretty tight, too.

_He needs a v-neck._

Dean rolled his eyes at himself, then settled in front of the laptop.

“Okay, so, there’s a family a couple hours from here getting plagued by a poltergeist. In case you never took parabiology, that’s a violent ghost that manifests by breaking a lot of shit. It’s a basic salt-and-burn situation. They’re pretty sure they know who it is, they just need somebody to handle it. Should be a pretty easy first gig.”

He brought up the photo, a nice 8x11 of a typical suburbanite family, complete with dog. He turned away from the laptop, leaning out of the way so Sam could see.

The bowl was empty.

“Dude, did you eat that whole thing already?”

Sam nodded.

“Do you want me to make some more?”

Sam opened his mouth, frowned, then shook his head.

“Okay then. I’m thinking we hit up a store, get you some of your own stuff, and see if we can make it to-” he checked the ad again. “-Fabius Iowa, before midnight. Sound like a plan?”

Sam nodded. Dean closed the laptop, shoving it into the travel backpack that already contained a spare power cable, flash drives, and an assortment of small tools. His go-bag was in his room, spare clothes, identification, and toiletry kit already packed. He dropped the backpack and rummaged through his closet until he came up with an empty duffel. It had been his dad’s, and even empty, it was heavy with the assorted ‘extras’ every hunter kept sewn into the lining of their bags. Warding, lockpicks, cash, and the like. His father’s crooked stitches paraded up and down the bag like lines of ants. It was stupid, leaving mystery tools sewn up like that. He didn’t know what was in there, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know where to look for it. But he hadn’t been able to tear his dad’s stitching out. He’d taken the clothes out and burned them with the body, but he’d thrown the duffel in here to deal with later. That had been months ago, and somehow he’d never gotten to it.

The stupid duffel got blurry.

He shoved it under his arm, picking up his other bags and heading out to the living room where Sam was waiting quietly. Dean picked up the notepad and pen from earlier.

“Oh. Almost forgot. I got these for you back at the market.”

He pulled the candy bars out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Sam along with the pad and pen.

 

 

First stop was wally world, one of the huge ones where you could buy a bowie knife, a winter parka, a carton of eggs, and a gram of coke if you talked to the right person in the parking lot.  

It was here that Dean really realized that Sam had _nothing._ He’d packed bags a hundred thousand times, but he’d never stopped to keep track of exactly how many things an average person needed on a daily basis. It didn’t help that Sam wouldn’t ask for anything. They ended up going through the pharmacy section twice after Dean realized that every “do you want this” was answered with a head shake, whether he wanted it or not. He threw the basics into the cart, sticking mostly to the same brands he used. He caught Sam taking sidelong glances at the shampoo. Dean had always kept his hair short and washed it with the same all-in-one he used on the rest of his body. That probably wouldn’t work on hair like Sam’s.

“What do you want, lilac? Or the one with Hannah Montana on it?”

Sam gave him a blank stare.

“I’m insulting your masculinity. It’s how I show affection. Pick one.”

Sam picked a nondescript white bottle off the bottom shelf. Then, hesitating, he picked a similar bottle sitting next to it. He put the two of them in the cart. Dean picked up the second bottle.

“The hell is ‘conditioner?’”

Sam pulled out his notepad.

“ _Keeps it from tangling_.”

“Yeah, okay. Throw that in there until we can get you a boy haircut.”

Sam looked like he was going to say something, and then he clenched his jaw shut and shoved the notepad back in his pocket.

Sam didn’t know what size clothes he wore, so Dean made an educated guess and picked a size up from what he normally got, tossing packages of socks and undershirts into the cart. He got enough to match his own schedule of once-a-month laundry.

“Boxers or briefs?”

Sam blinked.

“Come on, you’ve gotta have a preference. I can’t make this call for you.”

Sam retrieved his writing pad again.

“ _I don’t know._ ”

“How do you not know? This is essential, man.”

“ _Not dressed a lot._ ”

Dean had nothing to say to that, so he went with the middle ground and picked out a couple packages of boxer-briefs.

After that were shoes, Sam searching through the boxes for a pair of work boots in a size 16, while Dean tried to see if he could fit one of the disposable sockies over his head. Sam didn’t know how he liked his jeans, so Dean picked out a couple sizes of relaxed fits and sent him into the dressing room with instructions to pick a favorite. While he did that, Dean stuck a couple flannel overshirts in with everything else.

They didn’t have a jacket large enough to fit over Sam’s shoulders, but it was warm enough that Dean declared it could wait.

After that, Dean couldn’t think of anything else he needed, and Sam wasn’t speaking up, so Dean went through the checkout and then sent Sam back into the dressing room to change into his own clothes.

 

 

Dean shoved the bags into the backseat. They were parked in the overflow lot, significantly farther from the doors than the almost-empty parking lot required.

“You said you could fight?”

Sam nodded.

“Okay. I’m sure you’re right, but I’d like to check for myself before I bet my life on you. Fair?”

Sam nodded again. Dean walked several paces from the car, rolled his neck, and gestured for Sam to come closer.

“Okay, so just to start off, I’m going to try to hit you, okay? Right hand.”

Sam nodded. Dean paused a second, then aimed a quick hard punch at the taller man’s ribs.

Sam dodged.

Dean paused, then tried the same thing again, followed by a swing with his left into Sam’s gut.

Sam deflected the first, dodged the second.

Dean tried an uppercut into the sternum, followed closely by a hook shot to the temple.

Sam caught his arm, twisted it up to block the second hit, and with his other hand, tapped Dean on the side, just under his ribs.

Dean shifted his weight forward, hooking an ankle around Sam’s calf and pushing the taller man off balance with a shove to the chest. Sam almost went down, then pivoted, dropping his center of gravity. He used Dean’s ankle to steady himself, then ducked and aimed a quick set of punches into Dean’s lower belly. Dean was ready for him and caught his arms. Sam surged upwards, and Dean would have taken a forehead to the jaw is Sam hadn’t paused at the last second. Instead, the man just started up at him with a slightly self-satisfied smile.

“You weren’t kidding.”

Sam shook his head.

“For the record, I’m going easy on you because I don’t want to actually hurt you.”

Sam gave him a smile that meant he didn’t believe him at all.

“I was wrong, you _do_ have an attitude.”

The smile vanished and Sam dropped his eyes.

“Can you work with knives?”

Sam nodded.

“Okay, in the name of not going to the ER tonight, I’m going to take your word for it. Let’s get out of here.”

Sam paused at the car door. He’d sat in the back on the way to the store, but now the backseat was full of bags. Dean didn’t like putting things in the trunk. There were things in his wheel well that he might need to get to in a hurry.

“Do you mind sitting in the front?”

Sam looked at him very closely for a moment, then shook his head.

“Alright then.”

Dean slid into the driver’s seat, and a moment later, Sam got carefully into the other side. Dean took a breath.

“I gotta ask. Is the backseat a personal preference, or is that where people have told you to sit?”

Sam fished out his notepad.

“ _That’s where slaves sit._ ”

“Is that why you wouldn’t eat dinner at the table?”

Sam nodded.

“Okay. New rule. I don’t have time for any of that. Wherever I am, you’re there with me. I need you focused on what we’re doing, we’re both gonna get killed if you’re preoccupied with constantly trying to find somewhere submissive to stand.”

Sam processed this information, forehead furrowed.

“Also, I hope you like AC/DC because that’s what we’re listening to on the way to Iowa. And I’m gonna sing the whole way because I want to see how far I can push you before you rebel and slit my throat.”

Sam might have had a reply, but it was lost under the roar of the engine and the opening chords of “Hells Bells.”

 

 

“God, I’m tired.”

Dean flopped down on the bedspread of the queen farthest from the door. He made a weak effort to kick off his shoes, and then realized they were still tied, and groaned as he sat up to untie them. Sam was still standing by the door, crudely-stitched duffel over his shoulder.

“I’m going to bed, do what you want,” Dean muttered, freeing himself from the shoes. He shimmied out of his pants, dropping them unceremoniously on top of his shoes. His socks and tshirt followed, and then he flopped bonelessly back onto the bed and wriggled under the blankets. Behind him, he could hear Sam undressing as well, and then there was a weight on the side of his bed. Dean rolled slowly over and yup, Sam was naked again.

His cock made a valiant effort to sit up and pay attention, but it was past three in the morning, and the little man up top had shut down all nonessential systems for the night.

“Not tonight man. I’m fucking beat. Go back to your own bed.”

His eyelids felt like lead weights, but he kept them open long enough to watch Sam tuck his fine ass into the other bed. He settled in facing Dean, and for a moment, the two men just looked at each other. Then Sam leaned over and shut off the light.

Dean wondered if the other man was still looking at him in the dark.

He was asleep before his eyes could adjust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Sam's POV, morning wood, ghosts. 
> 
> For this chapter I did some interesting research. I learned some things about hand combat, knife combat, and guns. I also watched a video of a devocalization procedure on a dog. My search history is getting more and more interesting by the day. 
> 
> Interesting tidbit that I feel is relevant: [Jared does not own a hairbrush. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYAgf-185RQ)   
> [Jared's version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXpSa6dXYY) of this story is worth a watch too, mostly because he pushes his hair out of his face twenty-seven times and I'm pretty sure the answer to life's problems can be found in that gesture. 
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter was delayed entirely because of Sanshal, who told me about [Prime](http://archiveofourown.org/works/304757/chapters/487269) which is another slave!AU that I had to go read. Then after reading it, I had to sit on the floor and rock back and forth to comfort myself for a while. I dunno if 'recommend' is the word I would use, but damn. That is a powerful story. 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway. Sorry for the ever-expanding notes section. AO3 informs me that there are 68 subscriptions to this story, which is quite frankly mindblowing. I'm having a lot of fun working on this, but I can't tell anyone in real life, ("My church group had a great concert, what did you do over the weekend?" "Oh, you know, worked on my slave mutilation fanfiction, it's getting really popular") so I'm telling you. 
> 
> Let me know what you liked.


	5. In which there is sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Named the chapter so that new readers can skippity-skip straight to the fun bits without all that useless preamble. (You know who you are.) 
> 
> For the rest of ya'll following along at home: there's sex in this chapter and there's murky consent.   
> If it helps, I can tell you that Dean didn't start it.

Sam woke up slowly, stretching languidly on the bed. It felt good to be in a bed again, even if it did seem slightly strange to be sleeping alone. One of the parts of being a pleasure slave was that the masters usually wanted you there when they woke up. Though, they usually wanted you there when they fell asleep, too.

Sam frowned, casting a glance at the man in the other bed. Dean was sprawled out on his back, blankets a tangled mess. One pillow was shoved under his head, the other was on the floor several feet from the bed.

His new owner was an energetic sleeper. Good to know.

Sam slid silently out from under the covers. Morning duties didn’t change much from owner to owner. He made the bed, glancing occasionally at his sleeping owner. Dean was dead to the world. Sam checked the clock. 6:15. He didn’t know what time Dean usually woke up, but he knew better than to be unprepared. The alarm on the clock wasn’t set. Sam felt a twinge of nervousness. Did Dean expect a wakeup? He hadn’t said anything yesterday, so probably not?

Sam didn’t turn the light on in the bathroom, working through his morning routine silently in the dark. He knew he was expected to be presentable when Dean woke up.

The daylight seeping through the blackout curtains was sufficient for Sam to locate his clothes from last night. He shimmied into them quickly, then picked up the room key from its place on the nightstand and slipped out the door.

He padded barefoot down the hall, eyes kept down. There was no one else in the hallway, but it was better to stay in the habit.

The lobby smelled divine, the smells of baking bread and cooking eggs seeping out of the breakfast area. A few people were sitting at the scattered tables, drinking coffee and readings newspapers. There were a number of other slaves there, too, on the same errand as him.

He picked up a tray, then paused when he realized he didn’t know what food his master preferred. Something greasy, probably.

Sam erred on the side of plenty, picking up a selection of everything. He filled a plate with eggs and sausage and bacon and toast, then added a bagel and a muffin, a small bowl of granola (this he was almost certain Dean would not eat) and small cardboard cartons of milk and cranberry juice. Lastly, he added an orange, which he hoped Dean would leave for him.

Dean was still sleeping when Sam returned to the room. Sam glanced at the clock. 6:30. He set the tray on the little table in the corner, then padded back to the space between the beds to wait for his master to wake up. He settled into the typical relaxation pose, sitting back on his heels with his knees spread and his hands resting lightly on his thighs.

Sam had impeccable form, and he wanted Dean to know it. He’d been bound at the market, which had been unnecessary as well as humiliating. Sam knew how to present for buyers, he’d been to the market a dozen times since his original owners. Always in the main building. Always clean and unbound and dressed for show. Sam knew he could have sold for a lot more than Dean had paid, but Azazel hadn’t been interested in the money. He wanted his rebellious slave degraded, sold starved and beaten and dirty, like he was useless. He probably would have had Sam branded as violent, if it wouldn’t mean admitting that he’d been struck by one of his own slaves. Azazel had priced him low, hoping to sell him off to some brute or better yet, scare buyers off for fear of a ‘catch,’ and have Sam end up a ward of the state or snapped up into a labor gang.

Sam shifted slightly, and wondered again whether Dean was expecting a wakeup. Maybe it was a thing that was taken for granted, like breakfast? He knew Dean was hoping to get the case resolved today, which probably meant an early start. How early was ‘early,’ he wasn’t sure.

Sam risked a glance at Dean. He’d give it until 7:15 and then compromise.

At 6:45, he changed his mind and resolved to wait and take the punishment for negligence if it was the wrong call.

At 7:00 he decided that his original call had been correct.

He glanced at the click four times between 7:00 and 7:06.

At 7:08 he took his shirt off.

At 7:09 he remembered Dean’s discomfort at his earlier attempts to undress, and put it back on.

At 7:11 he determined that Dean’s discomfort had been a distinctly _aroused_ discomfort, and took it back off.

At 7:12 he put it back on.

By 7:14 he was thoroughly disgusted with himself and decided that Azazel’s decision to cover his tattoo had been justified, because he had no idea what he was doing.

At 7:15 when Dean still hadn’t moved, Sam climbed into the bed. Dean would probably have a morning hard-on, and that was something he could work with. He burrowed under the blankets, positioning himself between Dean’s splayed legs. He nuzzled gently against Dean’s upper thigh, glad to find that his prediction had been correct.

Dean stirred gently when Sam pressed the flat of his tongue against the underside of his erection, dampening the cloth. The boxers had a button, which Sam undid with his teeth. Dean’s cock sprang free, and Sam pressed a quick kiss against the base.

He licked his lips, wetting his tongue. The first time with a new owner was always exploratory. He licked gently at the frenulum, moving up and over the head and tonguing at the slit.

Dean moaned and Sam took the head into his mouth, careful to cover his teeth. He sucked gently, letting the ridge pop back out of his mouth. Then for good measure he repeated the pop a few more times.

Dean was definitely awake now. His fingers ran through Sam’s hair. Sam took the rest of the shaft into his mouth, relaxing his throat, letting the head rest in the back of his throat. He moaned, knowing Dean could feel it even if there was no sound. His tongue laved up the underside, drawing a gasp out of Dean. The barbell through his tongue was always hot, and it made a pressure point to contrast with the soft heat of his mouth. He pulled off a few inches, letting the suction increase as his lips approached the head. And then he sunk back down, taking Dean to the base. Soft gold hairs prickled at his nose. He repeated this motion, in-out, in-out, in-out, gently bringing his master out of sleep and into the waking world.

Dean’s fingers tightened in his hair.

“Fuck, Sam, you keep that up I’m gonna cum.”

Sam kept it up, tongue darting out to flick against Dean’s tightening balls, and then Dean’s hips were pressing up into him and he had to hold very still to keep from choking. And then Dean was coming with a cry. Sam felt ropes of hot come landing at the back of his tongue and he swallowed. His throat closed around Dean’s cockhead, drawing a strangled gasp out of the man, and he pulled back, waiting.

Dean lifted the blankets up, staring down into the darkness at him.

“You’re fucking incorrigible, you know that?”

Sam nodded, and waited for further orders.

Dean dropped the blanket, and climbed out of bed. Sam pulled the blanket off him, and set to straightening the tumbled sheets.

“Shit, you got me _breakfast,_ too?”

Dean sounded surprised, but not upset. Sam hoped he’d guessed right about the food. Usually he had a cook or another slave to fill him in on house rules.

Dean collapsed into the chair by the table, picking up a sausage link and eating half of it in one bite.

“Did you already eat?”

Sam shook his head.

“Do I need to tell you when you’re allowed to get food for yourself? Cuz that’s gonna get old.”

Sam paused in the middle of arranging the pillows. He looked at Dean. Dean ate his sausage.

Sam picked up the orange and sat in the seat across from Dean. Very deliberately, he began to peel the fruit. When it was peeled, he divided it into sections. When it was divided, he took a section and ate it. Without permission. Dean was utterly unfazed.

It was beginning to dawn on Sam that Dean didn’t know how slaves were expected to behave. It would explain why he let Sam get away with so much yesterday. Sam hadn’t been on his best behavior.

“So how’d you learn to fight, anyway?”

Sam stood and retrieved his notepad from the bedside table where he’d left it.

“ _Trained for the ring.”_

Dean stared at him.

“Bullshit. You’ve got skin like a baby’s ass. You’ve never been in a pit in your life.”

_“Switched majors.”_

Dean let out a small laugh.

“What to?”

_“Guess.”_

Sam looked up at Dean through his eyelashes, flicking the barbell against his teeth to drive the point home.

“Yeah, alright. I get it.” Dean looked out the window, his expression suddenly unreadable. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

_“Don’t like it?”_

“Hell yeah. Best wakeup I’ve had in… ever, and then breakfast on top of it.” Dean fixed him with a stare. “But you don’t have to.”

Sam ate his orange, and didn’t respond.

 

 

After breakfast, Dean called Garth, the dispatch agent, to let him know they were on site. Garth gave Dean the contact information for the afflicted family, and within fifteen minutes they had an address and instructions to come as quickly as possible.

Dean still paused in the parking lot to haul the impala’s trunk open and give Sam a rundown on the contents. Salt, iron, shotgun pellets.

“Know how to shoot?”

Sam shook his head. Of course he didn’t know how to shoot, nobody taught slaves how to work guns.

“Yeah. I just thought maybe before, you know. You might have learned.”

He’d been sold when he was eleven. Even if he had learned, it would be gone now.

Dean settled on an iron knife for Sam. He hesitated for a moment before handing it over, and Sam thought maybe Dean didn’t trust him, but then Dean spoke.

“This was my dad’s. Don’t lose it.”

Ah. That was the hesitation then. Dean must have been close with his father. Sam had not been close with his. The man had been a drifter and an alcoholic, dragging Sam around from one rented room to another for years until finally selling him or losing him in a poker game or whatever had happened. Sam remembered that he had been broad-shouldered and strong, like Sam was now. Unlike Sam, John had been aggressive and quick to violence, even with his son. Sometimes Sam was glad he’d never get the opportunity to screw up as bad as John had.

Sam realized he was staring at the knife. It had a leather sheath stained with something that was probably definitely blood. Dean was looking down at him expectantly. Sam vowed not to lose it.

“Alright. Let’s go kill a ghost.”

 

 

Sam was almost certain that the lawn of the house was plastic. Grass didn’t grow that evenly by itself, anywhere. The house beyond the plastic laws was identical to the ones on either side, across the road, and for a quarter mile in every direction.

“Gives me the creeps,” Dean had muttered as the impala had purred past streets named after trees. In alphabetical order.

The woman who had opened the door had stared at them in surprise for a moment before putting on a wide smile.

“Madeline Carmichael,” she said, graciously extending a hand.

Sam knew that smile. He grinned back at her while Dean made the introductions. Dean paused when he gestured to Sam, as if realizing for the first time that Sam, like all slaves, had no last name.

The woman looked at him a little differently after that.

“So, ma’am, you say you’ve got a poltergeist?”

“Yes. On the second floor. We haven’t been up there in weeks. Try to go up the stairs and she just starts throwing things.”

Something shattered upstairs, followed by an earsplitting shriek.

“That will be the bathroom mirror, I suppose,” the woman sighed. “It’s been slowing down recently, but I think she’s just running out of things to break.”

“And she never comes downstairs?”

“No. Never.”

“Anything that might be binding her to the house? A lock of hair, something with blood on it?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Alright, then. Where’s she buried?”

“That’s the problem. She was cremated.”

Dean frowned.

“In the report you said your sister died several months ago and was buried. Did something change?”

“Well Mrs. Garcia, down the street, _she_ had a ghost after her dog died, and she said that when she told the hunters that the body had been cremated, they didn’t want to take the case. So I told a little fib.”

Dean sighed.  

“Mrs. Carmichael, do you know why ghosts appear on this plane?”

“To break my bathroom mirrors, apparently.”

“Because something binds them here. Usually it’s a body. If it’s not a body it’s something else. Without knowing the deceased, the best we can do is start burning things they touched and hope we hit on the right mark eventually.”

Madeline blinked.

“Well that’s not very helpful at all.”

“That’s why we don’t take the cases.”

“Can you at least go take a look? Maybe you can kill her.”

“She’s already dead.”

“Please? I’m desperate.”

Dean glanced at Sam. Sam shrugged.

“I promise nothing.”

 

 

Dean went up in the lead, Sam following behind. The stairway opened into a hallway with white cream carpet, with doors off the sides. The doors were closed, but the distinctive sound of things breaking could be hard emanating from the room at the end of the hall.

Things breaking, and someone shrieking.

They crept down the hall, Dean with his shotgun and Sam with his knife. Dean aimed the gun through the doorway and Sam carefully twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

The sounds stopped instantly. The door opened to reveal a guest bedroom which would have been very tastefully decorated if everything in the room had not been utterly trashed.

Standing in the middle of the room was a man in a suit, a tie, and a fairly even layer of dirt and blood. He stared at them. They stared at him. And then he unhinged his bloody jaw and shrieked. Dean fired the shotgun, hitting the thing dead in the center of the chest. It didn’t dematerialize. It did start bleeding. And then it charged.

Sam slammed the door shut just in time for the creature to slam against the other side, splintering the door and shrieking.

Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean.

“That’s not a ghost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooops. Not a ghost. 
> 
>  
> 
> So something I hoped to get across with Sam's POV chapters. Obviously, he does not have a healthy developed psyche. But he's not a broken ruined mess either. I've been pointed in the direction of both "Prime" and "Keeping you in Sight" which are fantastic, but differ from my AU in one fundamental way.   
> Sam's property, which blows our entire concept of 'consent' out of the water, but his desire to please isn't based on fear. His conclusion of 'owners want sex' is the result of professional training, not traumatic rape. Less Lisbeth Salander, more Inara Senna. 
> 
> I hope that's coming across in his chapters? Let me know. 
> 
> I'm drawing inspiration here actually from another book, or an amalgamation of two books. Those of you in the slave!AU fandom are probably familiar with "Memoirs of a Geisha" which is a horrifically inaccurate book written by an American white man. It was based loosely on information given to him by Mineko Iwasaki, a famous geiko in the 70's. Iwasaki later went on to write her own, less sordid but more accurate memoirs, published in America under the title "Geisha, a Life."   
> "Geisha" in Japanese means "artist" and they use extremely exact rituals to turn their bodies and movements into a constant work of art. Mineko chose her career and left her family at *five* and trained her whole life to be the best she could possibly be. She was extremely successful, at the cost of her physical and emotional health. Geisha are not prostitutes, but in this particular story, I've chosen Mineko as a character model for Sam. 
> 
>  
> 
> Tl;dr: Sam's a geisha, I'm a weeaboo, enjoy the sex.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the boys fight a not-ghost.

“I thought you said it was the ghost of your sister?”

“Well who else could it be?” Mrs. Carmichael sputtered.

“Have you _been_ upstairs?”

The woman shook her head.

“No. Like I said, that creature just keeps throwing things any time we get close.”

“But have you seen it?”

“Of course. Ghastly thing.”

Dean took a quick stock of his facial expression. He felt like he was about to make one that would get him in trouble.

“Maddie- I’m gonna call you Maddie- is there any particular reason you thought your sister would manifest in the form of a man in a suit?”

“Well _I_ don’t know!” the woman huffed. “Aren’t _you_ supposed to be the one who knows about all this paranormal stuff?”

Dean grit his teeth.

“I can only work with the information I have. Which so far, hasn’t been great.”

“Well is it _my_ fault it’s so hard to get you guys to come do your job?”

There it was. The troublemaking facial expression. Dean could feel it spreading over his face.

Sam snapped his fingers repeatedly, drawing their attention. When Dean didn’t say anything, Sam pointed meaningfully toward the ceiling. Dean glanced up. He didn’t see anything, and then realized it was quiet. The shrieking and crashing had stopped.

“Oh thank god,” Maddie breathed. “Finally.”

“Okay. While we have a moment of peace. How long has that thing _actually_ been up there?”

“A little under two weeks.”

“And did it start slow?”

“No. It just…. showed up.”

“Anything around the time it appeared? Weird sounds, smells, anything like that?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Is there anything that you bought recently that it might have been attached to? Something for the guest room maybe?”

Maddie paused.

“We had some boxes of things from my sister’s house. The real estate agent wanted it emptied out so we didn’t have time to go through all of it. Maybe there was something in there?”

Great. Time to go dodge a monster to dig through boxes of a dead lady’s shit to see if anything in there was cursed. For the thousandth time, Dean wished he could have been born into a family of lawyers or doctors. Plastic surgeons, maybe. He’d be up to his neck in tits and ass. But no. Had to be hunters.

Sam was pushing the notepad at him.

“ _How did her sister die?_ ”

“That’s…. actually a very good question. Maddie, what happened to your sister?”

“She died in a car accident. On vacation, actually. Tampa.”

“Were any of her possessions brought back? Anything that was with her in the car?”

“No. Well. Just my nephew.”

Dean very carefully held his face very still.

“Your nephew was in the car when it crashed? Where is he now?”

“At school. He’s been living here since his mother died.”

“In… the guest room?” Dean guessed.

Maddie nodded.

“Oh! Do you think that’s relevant?”

“It… might… be,” Dean said, keeping his voice very level. In the corner of his eye, he could see Sam trying not to laugh. Then he suddenly stilled, and scribbled at his notepad again.

“ _Where’s his father?”_

Maddie shrugged.

“No one knows who he was. My sister never told.” She leaned in conspiratorially, whispering even though they were alone in the room. “She was only sixteen. Scandal, you know. My guess? He was married.”

She gave them a knowing look.

“Right. Well. Let us know if you think of anything else.”

 

 

 

“So much for a simple salt and burn.”

Dean rummaged through the trunk of the impala, looking for the gold knife. He had it in here somewhere, he was sure of it. Sam was bent over beside him, watching with interest.

“Quick inventory here. You’ve got your shotguns here, handguns over there, ammo’s organized in this lockbox here. It’s all color coded, red is salt, green is iron, yellow is silver, blue is for witches. Regular ones are black. There’s demon traps carved into the tips. It doesn’t hurt, might help. When in doubt, take a variety.”

Sam passed him the notepad.

“ _I can’t shoot._ ”

“I’ll teach you. Until then. Bladed weapons are here. We’ve got gold, silver, and iron blades, which go in this rack here next to the gross adjustment tools.” Dean gestured to the collection of blunt weapons. “Those are mostly iron, though I do have a trusty aluminum slugger to fall back on. Works particularly well on human monsters.”

Sam snorted.

“Hey, we get all types. I’ve also got some wooden stakes here. The wood type is marked on the handle, see? Sometimes it doesn’t matter, sometimes it does.”

Dean sighed.

“So theoretically, something in this little arsenal of mine should put that noisy bitch in the ground. It’s corporeal, and since it bleeds, we can kill it. The question is, with what.”

Sam scribbled at the pad.

“ _Quiet now. Look around while it’s gone?”_

“Yeah. You ready?”

Sam nodded.

 

 

 

It was with some trepidation that the two of them made their way back up the stairs. The creature had been quiet for the twenty minutes it had taken them to assemble their arsenal, but that didn’t mean it was gone. Now, Dean was creeping down the hall with a pistol full of assorted specialty rounds, and Sam was armed with his iron knife and a nice solid wooden stake, just for good measure.

Dean covered the door while Sam pushed it open, keeping out of his range.

The room was empty.

Well, no, the room was filled with cardboard boxes, toys, and children’s clothing, all covered with a fluffy layer of what might once have been a mattress. The bed frame was on its side, shoved into a corner with enough force to punch through the drywall.

A number of the boxes were marked “Josh’s stuff” and Dean ignored them for now, focusing on the boxes marked “Annie.”

“Ready for the fun part?”

Sam gave him a blank look.

“Sarcasm. This is actually boring as shit. Here’s what you do.” He hefted a box off the stack and placed it in Sam’s arms. “Go through there, and see if there’s anything giving off a general vibe of fucked-upness. You’ll know that you’ve got the right thing because when you touch it, something will try to fucking murder you. Got it?”

Sam nodded. Dean pulled down a box of his own.

“Right. Let’s do it then.”

 

 

“Jesus tapdancing Christ, how much yarn can one person _have?_ ”

Four. Four solid hours of yarn skeins, knitting needles, and half-finished hats and scarves. None of them had anything particularly paranormal about them, as far as the two men could tell. The boxes of clothing and assorted dishware were equally benign. And then, paydirt.

“Mom was a witch.”

The box they were looking into was packed to the brim with spellbooks, charms, and spellworking tools. Sam pulled out a book ( _Incantations, Moon Phases, and You_ ) and flipped through it. A couple passages were highlighted, but otherwise, it seemed normal. Trust Mrs. Madeline “Helpful Information” Carmichael to completely neglect to mention the box of fucking witchcraft supplies.

Sam jotted something in the notebook.

“ _Cursed object?_ ”

“Maybe. Whatever the problem is, I’d bet anything it’s in this box. Only one way to tell for sure. Torch it.”

A bloodcurdling shriek erupted from directly behind Dean’s head, and he almost dropped the box in shock. Sam was on his feet in a second, pushing Dean out of the way and sinking his knife deep into the creature’s eye socket. Blood geysered out, splattering across the side of Sam’s face.

It seemed impossible, but the creature’s screams increased in volume. The eye socket smoked and hissed where flesh made contact with the iron. The thing reached for him, it’s fingers digging into his upper arms.

Sam twisted the knife, then withdrew and slashed it across the monster’s throat. More blood, impossible amounts of blood, poured down the creature’s chest. The shrieking turned into a choked gurgle, and the creature collapsed. As the two men watched, it crumbled into a waxy, flaky pile of grey dust.

“I guess it’s vulnerable to iron,” Dean said after a moment. He knelt to touch the waxy remnants. The powder was cold under his fingers. It had no smell that he could detect. He brushed his hands through the powder, looking for an object or talisman that might have held it together. Nothing. Just grey powder, all the way through.

“I’m not gonna lie. I have no idea what this is.”

Sam passed him the notepad.

“ _Dead now._ ”

The letters were slightly shaky and there was a smear of blood across the bottom of the page. Dean glanced at the other man. Sam was looking down, hands in his pockets and hair falling in wet spikes across his features.

“You okay?”

Sam’s eyes snapped up and he nodded quickly.

“Never stabbed anybody in the eye before?”

That got a smile out of the younger man. Maybe even a laugh, but with his silence, it was hard to tell.  

“You get used to it. I gotta say though, man, I dunno why they didn’t put you in the ring. You would have killed it out there.”

Sam shrugged, eyes dropping back to the floor. Dean handed the notepad back, but it seemed Sam had nothing to say.

 

 

Back downstairs, Maddie had left them a note explaining that she’d gone to pick the kids up from school. Dean led the way to the kitchen, pulling a fistful of paper towels off the roll and soaking them.

“You’ve got a little something on your face,” he said, handing them over. The white towels turned a dirty salmon-pink as Sam scrubbed at his skin. The hair was probably a lost cause, but thankfully the spurts had managed to miss his clothes.

The front door slammed open and the sound of raucous screaming had the two of them reaching for their weapons again, until a pack of tiny, brightly-dressed humans burst into the room. There were three of them and they barely seemed to notice the hunters as they scrambled toward the kitchen cupboards.

“Not until after dinner!” Maddie shouted from the entryway. The children let out a single simultaneous groan of disappointment, and then clambered as a unit out of the kitchen and into the TV room. Sam and Dean exchanged a look.

“Kids, right?” Maddie laughed as she came into the kitchen. Her arms were full of jackets and backpacks that the children had dropped between the door and the kitchen. Some kind of hellish, high-pitched singing was echoing out of the living room. Dean wanted very much to be literally anywhere else. Maddie dropped the garments into an unceremonious pile.

“Got any of your own?” she asked Dean.

“No ma’am. Not me.”

“Probably makes sense. With your line of work.”

“Right. So, which one is your nephew?”

“Oh, those three are all mine. Josh is still out in the yard. He’d a little more subdued than his cousins. The counselor says that’s perfectly normal, after, you know. What he’s been through.”

“Well it should be a little easier on him now. I’m not sure what exactly was up there, but it’s dead n-”

The shrieking from upstairs was shortly matched by an equally earsplitting cacophony from the living room.  

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me?”

The living room exploded into giggles and “awww”s. Maddie narrowed her eyes at Dean, but Dean didn’t notice because he was looking at the creature at the top of the stairs. It was the bloody man in the suit, and he looked _pissed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awww, shit. 
> 
> This chapter is short and late because I left the house last night. Husband and I went out to see "the Witch" which was incredibly distressing. The movie itself had vague hints of pedophilia and incest as well as nudity and violence, but the really problematic part was how minor it was, when coworkers described it as 'disturbing' and 'terrifying.'  
> And I'm just over here like "this morning I wrote some smut about two brothers raping an angel."  
> So the movie wasn't anything special, but it's always nice to be reminded of how fucking *gone* I am.  
> Going to "The Witch" on date night probably should have been a tipoff that something is amiss in my brainmeats. 
> 
> Oh! Also, Death was in it. For fifteen seconds and he had a weird pointy moustache, but I knew it was him. 
> 
>  
> 
> In other news, this story has passed 100 subscribers since the last update. That makes this officially the most interesting thing I've ever done. Seriously. There weren't 100 people at my *wedding.*  
> When I picked up the prompt I had no idea that the slave!AU had its own fandom, and now I feel a bit like I showed up at comic con [accidentally cosplaying Doctor Who. ](http://www.dorkly.com/post/52990/17-more-people-you-see-at-every-nerd-convention#item-4)  
> So, hello to all hundred of you. As a quick poll, are there any gentlemen out there? Just curious.


	7. Chapter 7

“That thing was fuckin’ _dead._ ”

“Mister Winchester. Language, please.”

“It was dead, wasn’t it?” Dean asked, turning to Sam for verification. Sam nodded. The thing’s blood was still in his hair, so Dean couldn’t have imagined it. He looked at his hands. There were still streaks of the waxy powder on his fingers.

“That thing disintegrated into dust. We both saw it. Sam damn near cut his fuckin’ head off.”

“Mister Winchester! Language!”

Maddie was staring at him, aghast, and Dean realized that ‘Mister Winchester’ was _him_.

“Oh. Sorry. “

Something ceramic hurled past Dean’s head and shattered on the kitchen wall.

“ _Shit!_ ”

He and Sam dropped instantly, taking cover behind the kitchen counter. Maddie darted into the living room, out of range of the creature now taking potshots from the top of the stairs. The children’s giddy shrieks had turned into sobs, but Dean could barely hear them over the keening of the thing at the top of the stairs.

“Break for the front door,” Dean said, but Sam was way ahead of him, scrambling out from behind the counter and staying low. Something knocked him in the hip but bounced off and spun across the linoleum. Some kind of stuffed animal, by the look of it. Whatever this thing was, it was bound to the upstairs and it was clearly running out of projectiles.

A piggy bank smashed into the counters above Dean’s head, raining pottery shards and loose change down over him. He launched himself across the kitchen entry, taking a paperback to the shoulder on his way past.

Maddie and the children made it out the back door, and the irritated woman was waiting for them by the impala when they got outside.

“What did you do?” she demanded. “You were supposed to kill it, not make it worse!”

“Well, Sam stabbed it in the eye and it crumbled into dust, so we were pretty sure it was dead.”

“So now it’s, what, undead?”

“Maybe? Honestly, I didn’t know what it was to begin with, and I’ve only got slightly more to work with, now.”

“How can you not know?”

“I dunno, how did you forget to mention that your sister was a witch?”

Dean froze, then groaned, mentally kicking himself. The box of witchcraft supplies was still in the kitchen. If there was any clue about this thing, it would be in there.

Sam quirked an eyebrow at him.

“We forgot the box. We’ve gotta go back in.”

Sam nodded, and without further preamble, turned on his heel and went back into the house.

Something inside shattered.

“I didn’t mean alone!”

Sam, of course, didn’t answer. There were no more craching noises. Dean paused, waiting.

“Did you know him?” Maddie asked. Dean looked between her and the now-silent house, trying to draw a connection between her words and their current situation. “Before you bought him, I mean.”

“What? No, I’d never seen him before. Why?”

“He’s very loyal,” she said simply, and before he could reply, Sam was coming back out of the house with the box in his hands. He set it on the ground near the trunk, and when he bent, sparkling shards of glass fell from his hair and clothes.

“I didn’t mean you had to go back in by yourself,” Dean muttered. Sam shrugged.

Dean peered into the box. There were at least a dozen spellbooks in there, plus the charms and talismans.

“It’s gonna take us at least a day to go through all this. I say we take it back to the hotel and set up shop there.”

“What about us?” Maddie sputtered. “We can’t go back in there! What are we supposed to do while you’re figuring this out?”

“Stay with a friend? Or get a hotel room.”

“My husband’s going to be home in forty minutes and I’m supposed to just tell him that this isn’t handled and we can’t go back in the house?”

“That or lie to him,” Dean said, shoving the box into the backseat and slamming the door. “Either way, we’ve got your number, we’ll call you when we know something.”

He slid into the driver’s seat, weirdly satisfied when Sam got into the passenger instead of the back seat.

 

When they got back to the hotel, Sam insisted on carrying the box. He followed Dean two steps behind and one to the left, all the way up to the room. Dean paused a couple times, or took corners too tight, trying to knock him loose, but Sam was persistent.

Loyal.

Weird word. Just because he’d gone back into the house without waiting for Dean? She was probably reading too much into it.

Dean unlocked the room door and dropped down into the seat where he’d eaten breakfast. Sam set the box down on the bed, and Dean was up again, pulling items out and arranging them onto the bedspread. The largest pile was things he knew for sure were garbage. Healing crystals, energy focusing pyramids, lucky penny talismans, and the other pseudomagic crap every housewife kept in the house right next to the shake weights.

Dean pulled out a stack of books and dumped them to the side, then went back to the box for the talismans.

Sam was kneeling on the floor.

Dean paused, looking at the younger man. The way he was kneeling seemed weirdly formal, sitting back on his feet with his back straight and his head bowed. It suddenly occurred to Dean that he still had blood in his hair.

“Hey, do you want to go take a shower while I get started on this?”

Sam’s posture visibly relaxed, and he nodded, still not looking up at Dean.

“Sam.”

He stiffened again, his hands tight over the tops of his thighs.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Sam raised his eyes, head still down.

“Why are you sitting like that? What’s bothering you?”

Sam shook his head.

“What, have you got a vagina to go with that hair of yours? Don’t ‘nothing’ me, man. What’s your problem?”

Sam retrieved his notepad, scratching out a quick note.

“ _Not my place._ ”

“The fuck does that even mean?”

For a moment Sam looked almost exasperated, pushing the paper back toward Dean without changing the message.

“Okay, fine. Not your place. Whatever. Go take a shower.”

Sam nodded gratefully, then rose to his feet.

“Do that in the bathroom,” Dean snapped a moment later when Sam, predictably, began pulling his clothes off. Sam paused, his shirt half-off. Then he pulled it back on and dutifully went into the bathroom.

… Loyal.

_Fuck._

 

The first book was some mumbo-jumbo bullshit about communing with your guardian angel. It was the biggest load of bullshit Dean had ever seen, and he still flipped through it three times before realizing he didn’t remember a single word. He tossed it back in the box with the crystals and the pennies and picked up another book. He shoved the pillows behind his back and settled against the headboard. This one was some kind of “Secret” ripoff, all about the mystic power of visualizing things into reality through sheer force of will.

Dean spent a minute visualizing a partner who wasn’t a _fucking weirdo_ but Sam didn’t come out of the bathroom to explain himself.

Dean tossed the book into the box.

The one after that was about fairies. Fairies who granted wishes if they were appeased with certain varieties of fruit juices and baked confections. Dean was pretty sure it was bullshit, but the fey folk weren’t really his specialty. In any case, the fairies seemed inclined to offer boons, not curse people with loud-ass monstrosities that destroyed guest rooms and threw things.  

Dean set the book aside for possible later inspection.

The water in the bathroom shut off.

The next book was old, and in Latin. Those two things alone gave it an air of authenticity, but Dean’s Latin could best be described as “passable” and so after thumbing through it for diagrams, he set it aside as well.

Sam came out of the bathroom shirtless and toweling his damp hair down, but at least he was wearing jeans. Dean counted that as a win.

Sam draped the towel over the back of one of the chairs and then settled onto the floor again. Same as before, sitting back on his heels, knees spread, back straight.

Dean sighed.

“What are you doing?”

The notepad was on the dresser. Sam retrieved it, writing a single word under his earlier message.

“ _Waiting._ ”

“For what?”

“ _Orders._ ”

“Why like that, though? You did that before, too, that kneeling thing.”

Sam’s head was still lowered, but his eyes flicked quickly up to Dean.

“ _This is how slaves wait.”_

“So when you were talking earlier about switching majors. They really did train you. To like, act a certain way all the time.”

Sam nodded, very slowly. He kept his eyes down.

“How old are you?”

“ _Twenty-four._ ”

Dean whistled.

“You must have got picked up young.”

Sam nodded.

Dean remembered the manila envelope, still out in the car, with Sam’s whole story written out in twice-signed forms printed in triplicate. He considered asking how Sam had become a slave, but it suddenly seemed like a very personal question. It was ridiculous, he _owned_ Sam, he could ask him any damn thing he wanted.

And Sam would answer, because he wasn’t just property, he was _trained._  

It still seemed wrong to ask.

Still. Trained.

“That tattoo. Is that a Signature?”

Sam started to nod, then shook his head. This time when he wrote, he did it slowly, deliberately choosing the words.  

“ _It **was** a Signature. A for my trainer, Abaddon. But my last owner had it covered up._ ”

Dean glanced at the circular black mark. It was a pentagram surrounded by a circular outline, curvy spikes shaping the outlines of a starburst. In the pentagram, he could see slight variations in line width, and he realized there _had_ been an “A” underneath.

Dean didn’t know much about slaves, but he knew that most of them weren’t formally trained. When they entered the system, most of them were put straight into the job they’d been bought for. Lots of them were enslaved as punishment for a crime or as repayment of a debt, and they were too old or unruly for anything but general labor or housework. To get a slave like Sam- young, handsome, intelligent-

_‘loyal’_

_\- obedient_ , it was a godsend. And for him to be formally trained, that was the sundae under the cherry.

Something was very wrong with this picture.

“Why would he cover it up? With a Signature you’d be worth ten times what I paid, easy.”

If anything, Sam’s head dropped lower.

“ _I was disobedient._ ”

“What did you do?”

Sam’s eyes clenched shut. The pen hovered over the paper, making tiny dots each time Sam tried to start. Finally, he scribbled out a short line and handed the paper over.

“ _I will not be disobedient for you._ ”

Dean looked at the words for a very long time. Whatever had happened, it bothered Sam a lot. It had apparently bothered his previous owner a lot, too.

Dean was thinking maybe he should go get that envelope.

Later. Right now, he had work to do. The alluring mystery of his weird slave could wait, for now.

“Here’s what I need you to do. See these talismans here? I need you to figure out what they are. Don’t touch them with your bare hands, get a washcloth or something if you need to handle them. There might be something in the books, otherwise, there’s a laptop in my backpack. How’s your Latin?”

Sam did that silent laugh of his.

“ _Not great._ ”

“I figured. That’s fine. Google Translate can help, or just leave it for me.”

Sam nodded and rose up off the floor, leaning to inspect the small pile of trinkets.  

 

 

Several hours later Garth called to ask how the hunt had gone and Dean filled him in on the details of Maddie’s spectacularly inaccurate report. Garth commiserated and made a note on her file, in case she requested help again in the future. He didn’t have any ideas on what kind of creature was immune to rocksalt and could return from the dead. He suggested a phoenix, since they were known to rise from ashes, but nobody had ever seen a phoenix that appeared as a screaming man in a suit. Garth agreed to ask around, and Dean went back to the books.  

Sam had agreed to sit in a chair to use the laptop, and after Dean had showed him the bookmarks for the different paranormal sites he favored, had been making progress with the talismans. As Dean had suspected, most of them were hokey garbage. There were a whole collection of Chinese Feng Shui balance markers, probably set up to channel wealth or luck into the household. These got chucked back into the box with the useless books.

So far, they had a great big pile of nothing.

“I need a beer,” Dean mumbled. Sam immediately stood, but Dean waved him back down. “I don’t mean you need to get me one. I mean it’s late, this crap isn’t giving me any clues, let’s go to dinner.”

Sam nodded, staying on his feet.

“Come on. Let’s go get you a cheeseburger.”

Sam wrinkled his nose.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo Dawg, I heard you like communication barriers so I added some mutism to your cultural differences, so you can not understand while you don't understand. 
> 
> Seriously, though, these two are not on the same plane, at all. Next chapter is Sam's POV so hopefully we can find out what the hell his problem is. Would anyone like to hazard a guess? 
> 
>  
> 
> This is gonna slow down a bit for a while because there are a lot of things I want to put into these next couple chapters and I want them to make sense. Luckily there's a mighty blizzard pounding my neck of the woods today, and I have an unexpected day off. 
> 
> As always, comments and questions are welcome.


	8. In which there is noncon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got away from me a little. Please note the added archive warnings/tags.

For some reason, it was very important to Dean that Sam eat a cheeseburger. Sam didn’t understand why his owner would be so perturbed by his preference for natural food. He knew why Dean wouldn’t share his preferences. Dean hadn’t spent his childhood alternating between bread and noodles.  

Dean had never had to worry about his food being drugged.

Sam knew the bitter-sour taste of an additive that meant Azazel had something intense planned. He remembered the confused, heavy sensation which would settle over him and leave him pliable in his master’s hands. He’d been drugged when they did the piercings, hands holding his mouth and legs open, and then the _pain._

They had done a dozen of them that day, for entertainment, to see if they liked the look. Sam had been blindfolded, never knowing where the needle would pierce him next. For days afterward his mouth tasted of blood, and even gentle caresses were agony.

He would have held still. If his master had told him to open his mouth and allow himself to be pierced, Sam would have done it willingly. The drugs were for Azazel’s benefit, not Sam’s. He liked that they made his slaves frightened. He liked that from the first taste of bitter-sour, they knew that he was going to hurt them, and they didn’t know how.

Sam had tried to obey. He had. He held very still when master worked him over with the clamps and the floggers and the cane, because that was expected of him. He was silent when told to be so, and cried when he was allowed. Azazel liked it when his slaves’ eyes had sparkled.

The uncertainty and fear were a blanket that coated the entire household. The slaves never knew how he would come for them, or when. More than once, Sam had been roused from bed in the middle of the night and brought to a drawing room to service a guest. More than once, he’d been roused and flogged for no reason other than that his master couldn’t sleep. The fear soaked into his body along with the pain, and it ate away at his will until he became desperate. Disobedient.

 

Dean had never needed to make a case of macaroni last two months. Dean had never waited alone in a cell to see if food would come. And Dean would never know that apples were safer than bread because they wouldn’t be drugged. Dean knew nothing of this, and Sam had no plans to tell him. So Dean wanted him to enjoy cheeseburgers. Sam had been asked to do worse.    

 

The restaurant was busy so they sat at the bar. Sam paused when Dean took his seat, but before he could decide his place, Dean had grabbed him by the collar and pushed him into the seat next to him. Sam looked around. There were several obvious slaves here, marked by collars or tattoos or subservient positioning. He had none of these. To the outside observer, it would look as though he and Dean were friends or coworkers or brothers.

Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He didn’t know how to be a free man. He didn’t know what was expected of him. It couldn’t last. The woman would come to take their order and Sam wouldn’t be able to speak to her and he’d have to write it down and it would be obvious he’d never done it before and she’d just _know_ that he was a slave and he didn’t belong here sitting next to Dean like he-

“Dude, you okay?”

Dean was watching him with concern on his face, and Sam realized he was breathing very fast. He tamped it all down, bringing the cool composed mask over his features. Of course the waitress wouldn’t know, and even if she did, so what. Sam was exactly where his owner wanted him to be. If Dean wanted to buy a defective pleasure slave and dress him up and take him out for burgers, that was his right.

Sam relaxed, and gave Dean a small smile. Dean watched him for another couple seconds, then gave up with a shrug.

It turned out that Sam didn’t need to worry about writing down his order, because Dean had a whole list of things he was adamant that Sam try, and he ended up ordering for the both of them.

Sam discovered that he liked iced tea but not beer, and cheeseburgers with bacon but not mustard. He liked French fries with vinegar more than he liked them with ketchup. He liked celery and blue cheese dressing.

He filed these facts away down somewhere deep, where he kept the things he really knew about himself. In case he ever needed them again.

Dean liked all these things, seemingly equally. He watched Sam trying them for the first time, and laughed at the occasional face of distaste. Sam thought the laugh made up for the things he didn’t like. Dean laughed with his whole body and Sam thought maybe he’d like to make the man do it more often.

Dean liked that Sam liked French fries.

Sam thought that maybe he liked Dean.

It was dumb. He’d met him two days ago and knew close to nothing about him.

But still.

Sam had always worked to make sure his owners were pleased with him. He anticipated their desires and strove to obey any order that was given to him. They had always been happy with his performance, and his body, and that had made him happy. But this was different.

Sam realized with a start that he wanted Dean to _like_ him.

Fat chance of that.

Sam wasn’t dumb. He knew his time with this owner was limited. As a general rule, a pleasure slave could expect less than half a year of servitude in any given house. After that, the novelty had worn off and it was time for something new.

And Dean wasn’t dumb either. He was piecing together the clues about what he’d actually bought. Once he realized what Sam was worth- _really_ worth- he’d turn around and sell him again. Or maybe he’d put him in the ring, make his money that way.

Sam wasn’t sure which prospect sounded worse, but it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t up to him. Dean would do what Dean wanted to do.

Dean was telling him that ketchup was good but the true French fry condiment was a chocolate frosty. Sam had doubts, but of course, kept quiet.  

 

When Sam got back in the car, the manila envelope with his paperwork was sitting on the dashboard, seemingly surrounded by blinking neon spelling READ ME. Neither man acknowledged it, and when they got back to the hotel, Dean left it in the car.

 

To the best of Sam’s knowledge, the entire pile of trinkets was inert. Even setting aside the obvious ‘made in china’ stamps on most of them, the power they were meant to invoke wasn’t real. By the looks of it, Maddie’s late sister had gone in for every magic fad that popped up on her television. If any of these things did half of what they promised, the spiritual energy in that house would have been focused enough to burn ants.

He tossed the last of the charms across the room, where it clattered into the box along with the rest of the discarded items. Dean glanced up at the sound, then turned back to the stack of books he was searching.

Sam picked one up, flipping through it and pausing when he got to highlighted sections.

The spells looked real enough, Annie had just been a terrible witch. She seemed almost pathologically disinclined to follow directions, and spell after spell was marked with revisions and substitutions.

 _“Doesn’t work on a half-moon,”_ was scribbled in ballpoint next to one spell clearly calling for a full moon.

 _“Does not work with skim milk,”_ read another note.

“ _Do not use gluten free flour!”_

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes, turning the page to Dean when the other man looked up.

“Yeah, they’re all full of crap like that. But it seemed like she was interested in general wellness spells. These are all about bringing peace and tranquility and that shit. There’s a couple of love spells, but it’s more the ‘find your soulmate’ kind, instead of the rapey ones. Definitely nothing about summoning a howling monster to trash your sister’s house.”

Dean tossed the book to the side, then stretched out on the bed. His t-shirt pulled up, revealing an inch of skin along his lower belly.

Sam wanted to put his mouth on it, but he wasn’t sure if that came from inside him or if he was just abstractly aware that the skin there was a secondary erogenous zone.

It was difficult to tell, sometimes, where the feelings came from.

Dean noticed him looking.

“See something you like?” he asked, and Sam nodded before realizing that the question wasn’t literal. But it made Dean laugh again, and that was good.

“So you _are_ a nympho. Is that what happened at the last place? They couldn’t get you to quit jumping people’s bones?”

Dean meant it as a joke but Sam’s blood ran cold. He looked down, shaking his head.

_Please don’t make me tell._

_Please._

“Hey, man. It was just a joke.” Dean sighed, running his hands through his hair. “We probably need to talk about this.”

Sam was too high up. He couldn’t be here, sitting in a chair and looking over at Dean like they were on equal footing.

He slid off the chair, melting easily into the supplicant’s pose. Knees together, palms flat on the floor, forehead pressed to the backs of his hands.

_Please._

But of course there was no sound. Azazel had not wanted to hear him beg. He wanted him to bear his punishments in silence. It wasn’t enough to order that Sam be silent, because sometimes sound had slipped through anyway. Azazel wanted Sam _incapable_ of begging, and so one day there had been the sour-bitter taste and a bright white room and a mask that turned everything black. He’d woken up to fire in his throat and sobs that made no sound.

The doctor had been kind to him, Azazel told him later. The tone had been conversational, as though he didn’t have a hand fisted in Sam’s hair to hold him still while he fucked his mouth. He had planned to have Sam’s tongue cut out, but the doctor had argued strongly in favor of devocalization. The recovery time was faster and it didn’t interfere with the slave’s ability to suck cock.

‘He was very persuasive,’ Azazel had said, and Sam had closed his eyes and swallowed through the fire in his throat.

And now Dean wanted to know what he had done to deserve it.

Sam’s face burned with shame, and he was grateful that the pose hid his face from Dean.

“I’m serious, man. Something isn’t matching up here and I need to know what it is. Whatever happened, it pissed your last owner off a _lot_ and right now I’m just wondering if you’re planning to shiv me in my sleep and make a run for it.”

Sam shook his head vehemently. He would never. Not even to Azazel.

“Okay, so what then? I gotta know.”

Sam clenched his jaw, then reached for the pad of paper.    

 

He wished he were weak enough to blame the drugs, but he knew they were just an excuse. He was responsible for his own actions, no matter how much he regretted them.

Azazel had been hosting one of his ‘little parties’ and a number of his slaves had been brought up to participate in the festivities. Sam had waited in the lineup, eyes down, fingers laced behind his neck. Somewhere to his left, a female slave was sobbing quietly. She must have been new, the others in the line had more experience and knew better.

The drugs made him dizzy and Sam was glad when the guests passed him over in favor of others. He’d had turns before.

Of course the crying girl had been chosen immediately, half-led and half-dragged over to a table where she was bent over and fucked without further preamble. The guest using her had no finesse. Sam wondered idly why he’d been invited. He didn’t seem like Azazel’s normal flavor of guest.

Someone else went over with a gag, slipping it into her mouth and pulling the straps tight across her tearstained cheeks.  
That was more Azazel’s style.

The man came inside her, pulling out immediately, letting his come drip out of her onto the carpet. She started to straighten and he pushed her back down with a firm hand on her shoulder blades. She stayed down, and he returned a moment later with a small, springy switch. This he laid across her thighs and ass, raising sharp red welts and ever-louder yelps of pain.

He eventually discarded the switch, making another trip to the toybox and returning with a leather flogger. Sam winced on the girl’s behalf. Being flogged wasn’t usually so bad. The force was dispersed over all the tassels, like a broad stinging slap that faded quickly into a deep warmth. Over the welts from the switch, however, the flog would be agony.

Even through the gag, her screams were earsplitting, and Sam could see immediately that something was wrong. Her skin was turning a cherry red, which was to be expected, but as the blows landed, dark spots of crimson were rising on her skin.

She lost her composure and scrambled desperately away from him, only to have several pairs of strong hands haul her back and hold her down. She looked past her captors at the other slaves, eyes begging them for help.

Her eyes lit on Sam, staring into his eyes, and then the flog landed on her again with a _snap_ and her face screwed up in pain, clenching her eyes and keening and Sam heard someone say “stop it.”

And then he realized the voice had been his, and he snapped his mouth shut. The man with the flog had drawn a crowd, and several people gave him half-interested glances, but no one seemed to have really noticed.

No one but Azazel.

Unnoticed, he crossed the room to stand in front of his slave.

“You say that again, and you’ll take her place.”

“I’ll do it,” Sam heard his voice say again, and he shut his jaws so hard he bit his own tongue. Azazel was looking up at him with steel in his eyes, and Sam knew he’d fucked up, bad. And then his master smiled, wide and sharp, and walked away, and that was somehow worse.  

 

Sam knew better than to assume he’d heard the last of that incident, so he wasn’t surprised when the bitter-sour taste came again the next night. He wasn’t surprised when he was pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and brought to the playrooms in the basement. He wasn’t surprised to see the female slave from the party, her wrists pulled high above her head and covered from head to tie in welts and bruises.

This had happened to her because of him, he knew. This had happened to teach him a lesson, and it was coming out of her skin.

He was relieved to know he’d be taking her place soon, and that she’d be taken back to the slave quarters for a bath and some rest.

He held out his wrists, ready for the manacles that would pull him tall and taut and helpless. He wasn’t ready to have the flog pressed into his hands. The flog from the party, the wrong one, the one that had cut into her skin and raised bloody spots.

He looked up at Azazel, who simply inclined his head toward the panting woman, as though to say _get to it._

Sam had done this before. For every owner who wanted a bound submissive, there was another that wanted to be subjugated themself. Sam had been trained to please both types, but there was no pleasure to be found here. The tails of the flog were knotted, Sam saw, with twists of wire worked into the knots. This tool was dangerous.

He glanced at the other slave, who regarded him through wide, terrified eyes.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ he told himself. _It’s not her body. It’s his._

_It’s not my body. It’s his._

_This is what he wants. He has the right._

_Do it._

_Do it._

“Do it,” Azazel said, and that’s when Sam punched him across the jaw and ran.

He didn’t get far.  

In retrospect, Sam was grateful that it had happened in the basement and not at the party. In the basement, his punishment had lasted weeks and left him silent and bleeding. At the party, he came to realize, Azazel would have killed him.

He never saw the other slave again.    

 

All this he wrote in short, objective sentences. He didn’t blame the drugs. He tried not to sound like a member of the slave autonomy movement, though he knew it probably came off that way. He’d disobeyed and he knew it wasn’t his place to do so, and he hoped Dean couldn’t tell that he was terrified he might do it again.

He wanted to be obedient, he really did. He hoped Dean could see that. See that he had tried.

Dean read the pages one at a time as Sam finished writing, the set of his jaw growing more and more severe with each new page. He didn’t look at Sam. For that, at least, Sam was grateful. He didn’t think he could bear it if Dean looked at him with disappointment.

When he finished the last page he dropped back into the supplicant’s position, hiding his face and waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Now we know what happened to Sam. Poor thing, he tries so hard. 
> 
> The storm has knocked out the internet, here. We're dead in the water at work, so I got this chapter written for you. I'm posting via a cellular hotspot, so Verizon's probably gonna charge me 10K and my firstborn. That's okay. You're worth it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ninja edit from the future: Hello readers! I just finished chapter twenty five and people are starting to send me messages like "I just binge read this whole fic and now it's three AM and I have work in four hours!" 
> 
> This right here is a good stopping point, if you need some sleep. Or keep reading. Whichever.

The last words on the last page were a promise to do better.

Dean felt sick.

This should be impossible. There were laws. Slaves were property, but they were still _people,_ you can’t just _torture_ them. You can’t just…

Can’t just what? Slice their vocal cords? Sterilize them? Beat them? Rape them?

And this, now. Sam on the floor, again, doing some cross between a bow and the fetal position, and his shirt was riding up his body and Dean could see the marks underneath, marks he’d brushed off when he’d seen them because it wasn’t illegal to _punish_ a slave, and they hadn’t broken the skin so they’d _heal-_

He’d always assumed that there were some kind of safeguards in place, someone looking after the welfare of slaves, making sure the laws were followed.

No one was looking after Sam. He’d bought the man with cash in a warehouse where every other occupant would deny having seen either of them.

It must have been terrifying, Dean realized. To be brought to that place and just given away to whoever came by, knowing full well no one was coming to find you.

The vast differences between the two of them were making themselves known, and it was too much.

“Sam, get off the floor. Please, man.”

Sam’s fingers twitched but he didn’t move. Dean realized the man was hiding from him. Sam was scared. Of him.

“Okay. Ah, fuck. I’m not mad at you. I’m not gonna hit you, man. What about that thing you were doing before. The kneel. Can you at least do that?”

Sam’s shoulders relaxed slightly and after a moment, he rose up into the kneeling position Dean had seen him do before. He still didn’t look at Dean.

“I’m not gonna lie, dude, that’s a fucked up story. Not ‘cause of you. I get that you tried to do whatever he wanted, but it’s fucked up of him to want that. Wanting to hurt people like that is _fucked up._ Even if he did own you. And man, I gotta say, I’m glad you didn’t do it.”

Sam nodded very carefully.

“I’m starting to kinda get a picture now of the place you came from. I always heard about training and I thought they just taught you how to do stuff. But it’s more than that. They hurt you, didn’t they.”

It wasn’t a question. Sam hesitated, then nodded once.

Dean got off the bed, sitting cross-legged across from the slave. He got that Sam was more comfortable on the ground, but this needed to be said eye-to-eye.

“I need you to look at me for this one. Because this is important and I need you to believe me when I say it. I’m not gonna do that to you. Look at me. I’m not. I’m not gonna hit you, I’m not gonna fuck you, I’m not gonna make you touch anybody else. Got it?”

Sam’s hands tightened on his thighs, and Dean knew he had said the wrong thing again, but fuck if he had any idea what it was.

“ _What?”_ he said, exasperated. “What now?”

Sam shook his head slightly, the emotion falling from his face and leaving a blank, absent stare, and oh _fuck_ no, they weren’t doing that again.

“Tell me why that upset you. I don’t give a shit if you don’t think it’s your place. I own you and I’m telling you to do it.”

And so Sam picked up the pad again and started writing.  

“ _You’re not getting the most out of me.”_

“Yeah, so? You’re a person, not a stock portfolio.”

Sam shook his head.

“ _You were right. I’d do well in the ring. You’d make a lot of money. Or Abaddon would sign me again and you could sell me. You’d get more than you think._ ”

“I know you’re worth more than I paid. If I was gonna flip you I would have done it before leaving the market.”

Sam passed him a number. It was six digits long and it took Dean too long to realize it was a sale price. Dean blinked. He didn’t think the _house_ was worth that much.

“You’re shitting me.”

Sam smiled a bit, and shook his head. There was a touch of pride in that smile. Dean liked it. He let out a low whistle.

“You must be one fantastic piece of ass.”

That made Sam roll his eyes, and snatch the paper back.

“ _It’s more than that._ ”

“Like what? Like the kneeling thing?”

“ _The relaxation pose. For when a slave is not in use and expects to wait a while._ ”

“Like, they literally taught you how to sit and wait.”  

“ _Very specifically. There are twenty six positions which a Signed slave is expected to know._ ”

“So at any given point you’ve got an exact way you’re supposed to be standing or sitting or whatever and you’re supposed to remember to do that all the time?”

“ _And I’m very good at it._ ”

“Cocky fucker, aren’t you?”

That got Sam to smile.

And Dean realized that this was important to him. Dean didn’t see a point and thought it made slaves look a bit like suckups, but this was important to Sam. He’d learned all this very painstakingly, not just learned it but _lived_ by it, and Dean had just been ignoring it.

“You’re gonna have to give me some time with this, man. I don’t know how any of this crap is supposed to work. I’m just a hunter, the closest I’ve ever gotten to ‘formal’ was when my grandpa took me to Olive Garden for my birthday.”

That turned the smile to a laugh, strange and silent, but genuine.

“Yeah, so, sorry your sadist owner decided to punish you by selling you to a dumb hick, but you’re stuck with me now. Maybe make the best of it?”

Sam glanced up at him with a grin, then returned his eyes to the ground.

“I like it when you look at me,” Dean realized out loud, and then kicked himself because who the fuck says stuff like that? This was turning into a complete chick flick moment. Maybe next he could write some fucking poetry about how Sam’s eyes were the color of the ocean or some shit.

No, they were darker than that, he realized, because Sam was looking back up at him again, and there were flecks of gold in there, too, and brown, and they were dark under the cheap motel lights but Dean thought that out in the sun they would be a brilliant green, not like the ocean at all.

And then he leaned in and kissed him, which was stupid, because he didn’t even know if Sam _wanted_ to be kissed, but the other man opened for him without protest, leaning into it and sucking gently at Dean’s lip.

And then Sam’s hands were on his thighs and Dean pulled back because this was wrong. Sam would do anything Dean wanted if he thought Dean wanted it, and Dean was pretty sure there was a special circle of hell waiting for him if he took advantage of that.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not good at like, comforting or whatever. And this… whatever we’ve got here- it’s weird enough without me sending mixed messages. So that was dumb. Sorry. Um. I’m gonna make a phone call. You okay here on your own?”

Sam nodded, his eyes on the floor again.

Dean stood a little shakily. His left foot had gone to sleep, and it was giving him a considerable limp as he grabbed his phone and headed out the door.

He figured it was long since time he got a look at Sam’s file.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victor Henriksen was working late.

Victor worked late a lot.

It was one of the downsides of working a job primarily on behalf of second class citizens. Too many cases, not enough cooperation, not nearly enough resources.

The call came through to his desk just after eight, late, but not the latest he’d ever gotten.

“Agent Henriksen, Chattel Services.”

The voice that came over the phone was young, mid twenties maybe, and hesitant, like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.  

“Hi, uh. My name is Dean Winchester, and I think I might have something to report?”

It ended as a question, but the voice had an undercurrent of stone that Victor had heard far too often in his line of work.

“How can I help you today, Dean?”

“So I got this guy yesterday, and he’s, uh… he’s got some stories. I don’t have any proof or anything, but I think he’s telling the truth. And I’m not a lawyer or anything but I’m pretty sure the stuff he’s describing is illegal.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“The most obvious thing? He can’t talk. Says his last owner had his vocal cords cut.”

Victor sat up in his chair, leaning over his desk and digging through the stack of case files he had set aside. This was something he’d heard of before.

“Can you give me any names, Dean? Does he know who did it?”

“His paperwork says his last owner was a guy named Azazel Jabel, but I’m not sure it’s accurate.”

“Why not?”

“Well I bought him for cash, so there weren’t any transfer papers, but apparently he’s valuable? So the last transfers were all done by estate agents and signed and witnessed and all that shit. And according to the dates that are marked down on his paperwork here, he’s been in the system for just over thirteen years.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“He’s twenty four.”

“ _Twenty_ four?”

“Yeah, I get that people fudge their ages sometimes, but there’s no margin of error where that’s even close to legal.”

Victor found the file he’d been looking for. Murder case from a few months ago. Signed slave, found dumped in the woods with excessive mutilations and his vocal cords ablated and _healed_.

“Dean, can you send me a copy of that file? I’d very much like to see it.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr I read too much 'Explorers of Gor' during my formative years. 
> 
> I think I've got this back on track now. The last couple of chapters have been a bit dodgey because I didn't really know how to get where I was going? A lot of people say the little details are what make the story, but I still have to read over the chapters a couple times thinking 'does this *need* to be in here? Does it really?' Like I probably could have cut a couple scenes completely and nothing of value would be lost.  
> I don't have a beta and I don't think I could have a beta because we would just argue all the time. It would be like editing for Stephen King, they'd be like "this is too long, cut it down" and I'd be like "No I like it, it *all stays.*" 
> 
> So, um, a bit more worldbuilding in this chapter. Clarifying the rules of the slave trade a bit, which I haven't been able to do before since Dean assumes Sam knows, and Sam doesn't know what he doesn't know.  
> It was hard to get Dean's dialogue right in this chapter since I'm not really sure how he would act here? I dunno. In my head, Dean swears a lot. 
> 
>  
> 
> In other news, anybody see 11.15? Lucifer says 'use your tongue' and I've gotta sit there on the couch with a straight face like I can't hear ten thousand of you all going HNNNNNGGGH at the same time. That awkward moment when you realize that the writers are filling somebody's spnkink_meme prompt. 
> 
> Oh, I'm also on livejournal now, under HazelDomain? I'm super uncool and I don't really know how the site works, but if I ever figure it out, there will be stuff there.


	10. Chapter 10

The front desk had a fax machine, which Dean was grateful for but seriously, a fax machine? What fucking year was it? Who faxes things anymore?

Apparently Dean Winchester, because here he was pulling pages out of this envelope and sending them one page at a time to the Salina police department.

As the ancient scanner copied the pages, Dean was reading. The number Sam had given him wasn’t an approximation. It was the exact dollar amount for the sale to Azazel, nearly six months prior.

Dean’s stomach turned when he realized Sam had been with that fucknut for six months. The story Sam told him put him on edge, put a tenseness under his skin like he needed to _do something_ but he had no idea what. He wasn’t a smart man, he knew that. He’d earned a GED and spent his life killing shit that needed killing. He wasn’t going to storm off and find Azazel and chop his head off, and unfortunately, that kind of exhausted his arsenal of coping mechanisms.

The fax machine groaned, hauling the ancient scanner bar back to the starting location, and Dean laid down another bill of sale. Slightly less money, dated six months prior. And another, eight months before that. Two months. A year. Names Dean didn’t know, signatures on a bill of sale. Sometimes there was a description attached, written out in a medical professional’s objective language, detailing Sam’s body and condition and marked with a hurried signature.

There were photos, too, glossy black and whites taken as addendums to the forms. They documented Sam’s body in impartial detail, wide shots from the front and back, heavy shadows accentuating impressive musculature. Then there were close-ups, the predictable erotic shots, the tattoo, and then, in the back, one of Sam’s face. The colorless photos left his eyes looking dark, but more than that, they were empty. The face in the photo was handsome, and utterly expressionless. Dean wondered if they’d drugged him for these, or if it was possible for a person to disconnect that fully from themself.

He checked the date on the photos. They’d been taken just before Azazel’s purchase date. Six months earlier.

The Sam in the photos was easily twenty five pounds heavier than the version currently waiting for Dean in the hotel room. His chest was adorned with a stylized ‘A’ rather than the starburst, and the jewelry was missing from the head of his cock.

The scanner bar wheezed back to the starting position, and Dean realized that the clerk was watching him, and that he’d been staring at photos of a naked slave in the lobby of a hotel for the last several minutes.

He shoved the photos back into the envelope. Agent Henriksen didn’t need those.

Well, not all of them.

Dean took the photo of Sam’s face back out of the envelope, and laid it gently on the glass of the fax machine.

The last page in the pile was Sam’s title. It would have been written up when Sam first agreed to be a slave, and would contain the information that had identified him as a free man.

Sam’s title contained a small grainy photo of a man who wasn’t Sam. The resemblance was there, but this man was older, his face covered in rough dark hair. The eyes that looked out were dark, tired, angry.

The name on the title wasn’t Sam. It was ‘John Wesson,” and the birth date listed was forty-two years ago. Dean did some quick mental arithmetic. ‘John Wesson’ would have been twenty-nine when the title was drawn up. The man in the photo could be twenty-nine, if the years had been hard.

The title had been drawn up in exchange for the forgiveness of twenty thousand dollars in unspecified debt. The debt holder was not named. Dean flipped the paper over. There were no further details. Just a rubber stamp at the bottom of the page where some anonymous government clerk had witnessed the document.

Dean replaced the photograph with the anomalous title, looking at the headshot for another moment before putting it back in the envelope.

He pulled his phone back out, swiping to redial the last number.

“You getting these, Agent?”

“Yeah, the title is coming through now. I’m assuming the information on the title isn’t accurate?”

“The name, the photo, and the date of birth are all wrong. I don’t know about the rest of it. It looks like it was authorized, so I’m guessing the sale date is accurate.”

“And the description. If there is such a person as John Wesson, he’s tall and broad shouldered, just like Sam. Maybe a family member? I’ll do some digging. Will you be available at this number if I have questions?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’d like to talk to Sam, if you’ll allow it.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. We’re out of town on a job, but I can bring him in later this week. He doesn’t, you know, _talk,_ but he writes. If you make him. He, uh… he doesn’t really seem like he wants to talk about it.”

The sigh that came over the phone was far too tired for the hour.

“Would you?”

“Yeah, probably not.”

There was silence on the line.

“There’s one other thing. I wouldn’t bring it up, but it’s a requirement. You have a legal right to know.”

“Shoot.”

“If this leads to an investigation, Sam may be seized as evidence. You might get him back, you might not. If his paperwork’s forged, your chances don’t look great.”

Dean rubbed his temples.

“Yeah, I know.”

“No good deed, right?”

“Right. Look, Agent, it’s late and I’ve had a hell of a day. Can we pick this up in the morning?”

“Sure. I’ll call you when I know something. And Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me Victor.”

“Yeah. Right.”

 

Dean stared at the phone until the screen went black. Then he gathered up the paperwork and trudged back down the hallway to the hotel room.

The far bed was covered in books, the near bed was covered in Sam. He was half-under the covers, curled on his side with one of the pillows clutched close to his chest. He’d switched his jeans for a pair of Dean’s sleeping pants, and predictably forgotten to add a shirt to the ensemble. The room was cool and his skin was pebbled with goosebumps, fine hairs standing on end.

Dean closed the door silently, padding silently across the room and pulling the comforter up over Sam’s sleeping form. He paused, too close to the sleeping man, and his mind said _move back_ but his hand reached out and brushed a lock of hair away from Sam’s face. His face was calm, serene, and Dean couldn’t help comparing it to the face in the photograph. That face was expressionless, _empty._ This one was content. The little furrow between his eyebrows was gone, and his jaw had lost that hard set that meant he was trying to hold his composure.

He was probably imagining it, but Dean thought that Sam probably felt safe here. He smiled a little bit, and the smile froze on his face when Sam opened his eyes. Dean knew how this looked, he was squatting a foot away from Sam, frozen in the act of stroking the other man’s hair. He withdrew quickly, looking for an excuse but not finding one, but Sam just smiled that little smile of his, and lifted the corner of the blanket in an invitation.

 _‘Do not go over there, Dean,’_ Dean thought, as his legs carried him across the room. ‘ _You are taking advantage of him on so many levels,’_ he admonished himself as he climbed into the bed. ‘ _This is completely the wrong way to do this,’_ he thought as the slave snuggled up close to him, hands skirting over his sides. Sam lifted his face, pressing his lips softly against Dean’s. Dean opened his mouth, letting him in, and Sam’s tongue was hot where it flicked across his skin. Sam’s hands delved under the waistband of his pants, and that snapped him out of it.

“I can’t do this,” he muttered, closing his eyes before the sight of stubble on that strong jaw could shatter his convictions completely. “I can’t handle you thinking you have to.”

Sam grinned, flirty and dark, and ground his hips against Dean’s body, and _fuck_ he was big, Dean realized. Sam’s mouth was on his again, hot and wet and nipping teeth and his hands were pulling Dean’s thigh up over him and all he wanted was to push into that lithe firm body until-

“Wait, wait,” Dean gasped, pulling away and pressing his hands to Sam’s chest. “Do you want to do this? Do you really really want to do this? Not because you think I want to do it. Do _you_ want this?”

Sam stared at him, hazel eyes flicking back and forth across Dean’s face. And then, very slowly, he shook his head. His eyes dropped.

“Hey, look at me.”

Sam hesitated, but he met Dean’s eyes.

“It’s okay, that you don’t want to. You don’t have to. It’s okay. Really. I’ll clean off the other bed and-”

Sam’s hands shot out, bunching in Dean’s shirts and pulling him back. And then a look of panic crossed Sam’s face and he drew back like he’d been burned.

“Hey, it’s cool. Do you want me to stay here? We don’t have to fuck, it’s fine. I can just be here and you do whatever, okay?”

Sam looked hesitant and torn and confused and it was breaking Dean’s heart. He didn’t know what to do, afraid that if he made any move toward the other man, Sam’s fragile little stand of self-determination would crumble and he’d end up having six-figure sex with someone who didn’t want it.

Sam came to some kind of conclusion in his mind and he pulled away, settling in the middle of the bed. He rolled onto his side, reaching out for Dean, and Dean went. Sam pulled at his shoulder, putting Dean where he wanted him, which turned out to be ‘little spoon.’ Not what Dean would have guessed, but not bad. Sam’s body felt impossibly warm and solid pressed up against his back, one strong arm over his waist, holding him close. Within a few minutes, the slave had fallen asleep again.

Dean couldn’t sleep. This was definitely the frontrunner for top ten most comfortable sleeping positions he’d ever been in, but he couldn’t stop going over his conversation with Victor.

_“I’d like to talk to Sam, if you’ll allow it.”_

If he’d allow it.

Sam had been beaten and raped and mutilated and it had been going on since he was child and he needed Dean’s permission to talk to the police.

He’d bought the man but even when he handed over the money he hadn’t realized what, exactly, he was buying. What he now owned. It was more than having a roommate he could boss around or someone he needed to buy stuff for or a partner to work with. He owned something that should never, ever belong to anyone but Sam. It was terrifying in it’s importance, and only slightly more terrifying, was the prospect of having to give it back.

 

 

When Dean woke up in the morning, the bed was empty. He could smell bacon and coffee and that was enough to rouse him out of sleep. He’d gone to sleep in his clothes, so no surprise wake-up blowjob, for which he was thankful.

When he opened his eyes he half-expected to find Sam naked on the floor by the bed, kneeling and waiting, but the space between the beds was empty. Sam was fully dressed for once, bent over the other bed and studying the collection of books with a look of concentration.

“You’re up early,” Dean remarked. His voice was rough with sleep, and Sam startled. He hadn’t seen Dean wake up. He wavered, and Dean could _see_ him shifting back and forth on some decision.

“What’s up?”

Sam picked up his notepad and tossed it to Dean, letting him read the sentence already written there.

‘ _There’s a book missing.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, we were fighting a monster a couple chapters ago, I remember now. 
> 
> The next chapter is Sam's POV but I think it's all monstering with no angst at all, so ya'll can probably skip it. Maybe a touch of angst? With some snuggling and sexual tension. It's what makes my half-baked plotlines worth reading. 
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter happened by accident. I thought we were done with Dean's POV. Sam was supposed to have the books figured out when Dean got back from talking with Victor, but Dean had more things to say and it took so long that Sam fell asleep. So we get Dean!Introspection. 
> 
> I should already have the Sam POV chapter written, but I was distracted by ameliacareful's [ "The Real Thing" ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5958444/chapters/13694397) which is like the French Mistake in reverse, where Jensen ends up spending some time with an absolutely terrifying Sam BAMFchester.  
> Basically it's [ this gif ](http://www.thehomeplanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Psychopaths.gif) for 15,000 words. The characterization is spot-on. 
> 
> And while I'm doing shoutouts- this was originally a fill for a kink_meme post.... you still out there nonnie? Hope I'm doing all right by your prompt.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean blinked at him. His hair was messy and Sam could see this was a little bit too much information to process this early in the morning. He retrieved the mug of coffee from the table, crossing the room and setting it gently on the nightstand. Dean pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing at his temples. After a moment, he reached for the coffee and downed half of it in one swig.

“Ah. Okay. Yeah. So, book?”

Sam nodded, turning to the other bed where he’d arranged the books. In between the self-help books and the paperbacks with Borders price tags still attached, there were a number of hardcover books, older, and plain. The covers had nothing but a simple engraving of a flower or a tree, and the last name of the author- “Sikora.”

These were recipe books of spells, skipping over the typical introduction of light vs. dark magic and the great joys of communing with Gaia, and getting straight to the methodology. And these spells were specific. They weren’t about ‘positive energy’ or magnetism healing or aligning ions in the body. The first spell Sam had found dealt with creating wells on land without water. The one after that was a spell to banish vermin from a home. Whole chapters were filled with spells regarding specific plants- make wheat grow in damp soil, bring a sunflower to blossom, kill dandelions and milk thistle in a field. Spells on how to make a person or animal catch pregnant. Simple, practical magic, presented without embellishment or flourish.

These he had laid out in a pattern, which he now showed to Dean.

“So why do you think one’s missing?”

Sam snatched up his notepad.

“ _There’s a pattern. Botany, biology, metaphysics.”_

He gestured to where the books were laid out in columns by type.

“ _Checked the publishing dates. One of the metaphysics is missing. Botany in 1953, biology in 1954, botany again in 1956. 1955 is missing.”_

“Think the kid has it?”

Sam shrugged.

“I bet the kid’s got it. I’ll call Maddie.”

He grabbed his phone off the side table, then paused, looking at Sam.

“You eat?”

Sam shook his head.

“You get food for yourself?”

Sam nodded. He had. An orange and a cup of granola, like yesterday, and today he had added a waxed cardboard box of soy milk. This he had hesitated on, because there was no way he would be able to pretend he had gotten it for Dean. He’d eventually left it on the tray, and now he was glad he had.

“Good. You eat, this might take a bit.”

Dean flopped back onto the bed, listening to the phone ring and flipping through one of Sikora’s books.

“Hey, Maddie. It’s Dean. Hey look, we’re looking for-” Dean suddenly cut off. “Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to your husband.”

The voice that came over the phone was so loud Sam could hear it from where he was sitting. Dean jerked the phone away from his ear.

“Yeah, I know what hotels cost. I’m in one right now.”

More shouting.

“It’s not my fault your house is haunted. My partner shanked the thing in the eye, it came back. Not sure what else you want us to do.”

The shouting was faster now. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Okay, well how about you come over here and I’ll give you some of the sharp shit I keep in my trunk and you can go try your luck. I won’t even charge you a rental fee.”

The line went quiet.

“Yeah I thought so. So like I was telling Maddie, we’re looking for a book. Green, hardcover, old. 1955. Might have a tree or something on the cover. We think Josh might know where it is. Take a look for us?”

Loud mumbling.

“Thanks, you’re a real champ.”

Dean hung up and tossed the phone onto the bedspread.

“What a douche.”

Sam snorted, laughing silently around a slice of orange. Dean was looking at him with a slight smile, and Sam wondered if maybe Dean liked seeing him laugh.

“Good catch on the book. Not sure I would have got that on my own.”

Sam kept his eyes on his orange.

Dean downed the rest of the coffee and hauled himself into a standing position. Once he was up he blinked a couple times, like he’d forgotten what he was doing up there. And then he shuffled into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Sam finished his orange and picked up Dean’s bag. He didn’t know if the man planned out his wardrobe, but he doubted it and made an educated guess on what to lay out.

He heard the shower kick on, and retrieved the dirty clothes from the floor of the bathroom, putting them into the plastic trash bag that Dean was using as a hamper.

He glanced back at the bathroom door. Dean had left it open, not just unlocked, but open. He knew that with a normal owner, he’d be expected in the shower.

But Dean wasn’t a normal owner, so maybe he wasn’t expecting Sam at all.

But he’d left the door open, so maybe that was supposed to be a hint?

Maybe Dean didn’t _expect_ him, but was just _hoping._

Or maybe he’d just left the door open and he didn’t care what Sam did at all.

He wished he could ask. Just knock on the door and offer an invitation.

The water shut off before Sam could make a decision, which was a decision in itself, if he was being honest with himself. It occurred to him suddenly that if Dean _had_ been waiting, then he had screwed up, and Dean was going to be mad at him when he emerged.

He glanced around the room, looking for something that would placate or distract the hunter if it turned out he was angry. Nothing jumped immediately to mind. Normally he’d wait on the bed and turn their attention, prove his worth that way. But Dean didn’t want him to do that (that much Sam was sure about) so he was at a loss.

He was too high up.

He crossed the room and settled to the floor between the two beds, his back to the nightstand. It felt better being low, being surrounded. It focused him. Anything that might come at him was going to come from one direction, and he knew what direction it was.

He was being ridiculous. He’d upset masters before, it was a learning opportunity, that’s all. He’d be punished and afterward, he’d know what was expected of him.

He’d survived Azazel’s punishments, he was sure he could withstand Dean with the dignity and grace that was required.

He folded his legs underneath him, sitting back on his heels, but he kept his knees together, placing his hands on the floor to either side of them. He leaned forward, putting his weight on his hands, keeping his arms straight.

Dean came out of the bathroom just as Sam realized he should probably have taken his shirt off. Leaving it on contradicted the purpose of the position, and he hoped Dean didn’t take it as a challenge.

He heard Dean walk across the room and take a seat at the table. He kept his eyes down. It was killing him not to know what Dean was thinking, but he knew better than to raise his eyes on an angry master.

“This is new.”

He didn’t sound angry. Maybe a little bit amused. Sam didn’t react.

“Is this another one of the twenty six?”

Sam nodded once.

“But this isn’t the ‘sitting and waiting for orders’ one, so what’s this?”

Sam didn’t move. He didn’t know how to explain. His notepad was on the bed, and he didn’t dare stand up to retrieve it. But he’d been asked a question, he couldn’t just refuse to answer. He shook his head. He still wouldn’t look up.

“Seriously, man. What are you doing.”

This was a nightmare and getting worse by the minute. Dean was standing up and coming closer and Sam braced his shoulders. He wished he could respond, but he couldn’t, so he’d take the punishment and explain his failure later.

Dean sat down on the floor next to him, his back to the bed, and Sam saw that he was holding the notebook.

“I’m gonna have to find a list of all this somewhere. In the meantime, would you humor me and tell me what the hell’s happening with you?”

Sam took the notepad, keeping his head down.

“ _There are things I haven’t done. It might have upset you.”_

“So this is, what, the ‘sorry I fucked up’ pose?”

“ _Yes. Anticipation of punishment.”_

Dean was silent for a moment, and then suddenly-

“You think I’m gonna _whip_ you?”

“ _If you thought it necessary.”_

“Oh for god’s sakes, man, I thought we were past this.” Dean’s hands were on his shoulders, pulling him up and pushing him back against the nightstand. “Look at me. I want you here and understanding this, because apparently it didn’t stick yesterday. I am not. going. to. hit. you. I’m not gonna whip you, I’m not gonna _punish_ you. In all likelihood, I’m not even gonna get to _keep_ you.”

Sam nodded. After he’d told Dean what his sale price had been, the hunter had gone outside to make some calls. He hadn’t come back for a very long time, and Sam was more than smart enough to connect those dots. Dean had won the lottery, it was stupid to hope he wouldn’t collect.

“I made a police report yesterday.”

Sam frowned.

“After what you said, I just- I needed to do something. It just crawled under my skin, the idea that this guy was out there doing this shit and no one even notices, and you were with him for six _months_ and no one knew. And then your file…”

Dean looked up at him and there was actual concern on his face.

“Have you really been a slave for thirteen years?”

Sam counted off in his head. He knew when he’d been sold and he knew what year it was now, and yes, it had been thirteen years. Seemed like longer. He nodded, then shrugged. ‘All his life’ seemed like a better description than anything he could count off in years.

“So how did they do it? How did they get an eleven year old registered as John Wesson?”

Sam gave his owner a blank look. He supposed his father’s name would be on his paperwork somewhere, after all, he was the one who had sold him originally, but registered? That didn’t make sense. Sam should be registered under his own name. He’d never seen his documentation but he knew that much, at least.

He looked to Dean, questioning, and Dean rose and returned with the manila envelope. He flicked through the contents, drawing out a piece of paper and passing it to Sam.

His father’s picture hit him like a hammer. He hadn’t seen the man since he was child and even still, the grainy photo was enough to make his stomach drop. This was the man who had broken his arm and then held him to a wall and choked him until the crying stopped.

John hadn’t liked the begging any more than Azazel.

He’d long since lost the ability to picture the man clearly, but the photo brought it all back, and Sam was disgusted to see himself in those features. They had the same thin mouth, the same angular jaw, and the same eyes.

John Wesson. And he had been Sam Wesson. Back when he had a last name.

Sam scanned the rest of the document. It didn’t make sense. It was his father’s photo, his father’s face, his father’s description, his fathers birthdate. Or so he assumed. The year seemed right.

“ _What is this?”_

“It’s your title.”

“ _That’s not me.”_

“Yeah, I thought that was weird, too. You’ve never seen this before?”

Sam shook his head.

“But the year is right? This is when you were sold?”

Sam nodded.

“And you were eleven?”

He nodded again. Dean buried his face in his palm, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“Christ, that’s fucked up. Sam, you can’t _sell_ an _eleven year old._ Whatever bait and switch they pulled to make this happen… someone’s going to jail over this, man.”

Sam blinked. This was news to him.

“ _Why not?”_

“Because you have to agree to it! They set it up to get people out of prison and debt and shit, not to fucking _trade kids!_ ”

Dean was upset and Sam didn’t know what to do. Dean wasn’t going to hit him or fuck him and he didn’t know what else he was good for.

Dean threw the envelope across the room, but it only made it a couple feet before fluttering unsatisfyingly onto the bed.

“ _Fuck!”_ Dean said again.

The phone buzzed on the nightstand, and Dean snatched it up.

“What?” he snapped. Muffled murmuring from the speaker. “Yeah, alright. We’ll be there in an hour.”

He tossed the phone back onto the nightstand without further discussion.

“Kid’s got the book.”

Sam didn’t know what to do with this information, so he waited for Dean to tell him. Dean looked over and saw him watching expectantly.

“Okay. Eat your rabbit food and pack your shit, we’re getting out of here and meeting up with the Carmichaels at their hotel. The kid’s got the book, and hopefully that’ll tell us what the fuck this thing is. We gank it, we head back to Kansas, and then I’m taking you to meet a very nice police officer whose going to help us put some _mother fuckers_ in a _fucking cell._ ”

Sam didn’t want to talk to the police. Never in his life had people spoken positively about them. Usually when a police officer showed up to talk to his dad, it meant they were moving. Sometimes they wanted to talk to Sam, like when he’d gone to the ER for the broken arm. Sam knew better than to tattle.

Bad things happened when cops figured out the truth. Throughout his whole life, Sam had known that to be true.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Sam and Dean were supposed to have a moment in the shower and then they were supposed to go fight monsters, but I couldn't persuade Sam to go in there. So you get this.   
> Dean was also going to keep the police report a secret for a while, until he had something conclusive to report to Sam, but it kinda slipped out. He's a little more upset by the whole thing than I would have guessed. Something about kids? 
> 
>  
> 
> I know I promised a chapter yesterday, but my boss called and needed help with a project. I pulled some weekend hours and managed to snag a "You are not Alone" shirt which I justified to Husband by telling him it's for a good cause. #TechnicallyTrue 
> 
> I'm not gonna promise a new chapter for tomorrow, because the spnkink_meme prompt boards are opening in the morning and it's possible I'm going to spent the next few days pounding out pulp smut because I am *definitely* willing to sell out my artistic integrity for kudos. 
> 
> On that note, the kudo count for this story has reached a number I like to call "my graduating class" and that is mindboggling. That's... too many people. AO3 is counting wrong. There's no other explanation.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for this chapter: [Angels and Demons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDIWYkPHqWg) by Assemblage 23. It reminds me of Castiel, but I listened to it on repeat while I wrote the chapter, so it's the soundtrack.   
> Assemblage 23 is the band I point to when people bitch that music nowadays all sounds the same and people wrote better lyrics Back In The Day. If you don't want vapid music, shut off clearchannel and take some responsibility for the media you're consuming. /rant.

On the drive from Kansas, Dean had changed the tape no fewer than six times. He sang along with every single song in a deep baritone. Sam thought Dean probably spent a lot of time singing to his dashboard.

Dean was not singing now.

The radio was on, turned down low, the lyrics to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ barely audible over the sound of the engine. Dean had to know the song, everybody knows this song, but he wasn’t even tapping his fingers on the wheel.

Sam wished he knew how to make this better. So what if his paperwork was wrong? Or if he’d been sold too early? He was here now. That should be enough, right? It wasn’t like _Dean_ was the one who’d been sold.

He couldn’t even say anything. He had his notepad in his pocket, but he didn’t know what to write. And anyway, Dean was driving. Driving and fuming.

The phone buzzed. Dean picked it up with one hand, the other still resting on the steering wheel.

“Yeah?”

A pause.

“We’re five minutes out.”

Another pause. This one longer.

“Well just stay away from it. You got that book? Good. We’ll need it.”

He hung up the phone.

“Boogeyman’s at the hotel.”

Sam waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, Sam made the ‘go on’ gesture. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Boogeyman’s at the hotel, it’s breaking shit, they’re gonna lose their deposit, the dad’s pissed at us for not handling this yesterday. That’s all I know.”

He took the exit ramp too fast and rolled the stop sign. The hotel could be seen from the highway, but it was five more turns through a divided thoroughfare before they actually pulled into the parking lot. The Carmichaels were waiting by the lobby doors in their pajamas.

There were, in fact, quite a _lot_ of people waiting by the lobby doors. Probably something about a bloody screaming specter camping out in one of the rooms.

Dean was out of the car and stalking toward the building before Sam could even get his seatbelt off. He scrambled out of the car, following Dean to where Maddie was sitting miserably on the stone wall surrounding a topiary.

“Got the book?”

She handed it over. She looked like she could use a cup of coffee. Maybe Irish coffee.

Dean flipped through it, looking for anything marked. It wasn’t hard- about a quarter of the way through, a page was marked with a ‘Harry Potter’ bookmark. Dean scanned the page and rolled his eyes. He flipped the book over to Sam.

_Reclaim a Wandering Lover_

_For the return of a philandering husband or father to his rightful house and home._

Dean was pinching the bridge of his nose. Sam scanned the ingredients.

“You keep a lot of clove oil in the house, Maddie?” Dean asked.

“What’s clove oil?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Where’s Josh?”

“With my husband, why?”

“Because he’s a shitty witch, that’s why. He’s doing the spell with something other than clove oil, and also, he doesn’t understand the difference between ‘philandering’ and ‘dead.’ Probably has his mom to thank for that. So we’re going to go kill that thing again, and as long as Josh doesn’t _summon him back_ you should be all set.”

Maddie blinked at him.

Sam turned back to the car. He had a feeling he was going to need his knife again.

 

This hotel was nicer than the one they had been staying at. The lights in the hallway were flickering and erratic, plunging them into periodic darkness which finely accentuated the earsplitting shrieks coming from the end of the hallway.

Sam had a distinct feeling of déjà vu.

He felt like this scenario should not give him déjà vu.

Dean’s shotgun was filled with iron birdshot, so with any luck, Sam wouldn’t be taking another bloodbath. He kept the knife ready anyway.

They reached the hotel room door, not even bothering to stay quiet. No way that thing could hear them over the din coming from inside the room.

Sam dropped the key card into the slot, pushing the handle in when the lights turned green.

The room was a maelstrom of torn bedding and pottery shards. In the center stood the man in the suit, covered in blood and grave dirt. He stared them down with his one remaining eye. He lunged for Sam, and Dean blew his head off.

The corpse fell to the carpet, once more dissolving into the waxy powder they’d seen before. Dean kicked the pile and stomped back down the hallway. By the time Sam caught up to him, he was calling Garth and telling him the job was done.

Maddie’s husband seemed happy to see them when they came back out. His attitude regarding the situation seemed to have changed somewhat when he learned this wasn’t an average haunting. He approached with a kid that Sam assumed was Josh, and clapped the two hunters on the back.

“Well done, boys,” he told them. “Absolutely fantastic. Couldn’t have asked for better. I’m going to recommend you to everyone. Do you have business cards?”

Sam looked to Dean. Dean shook his head. People were staring at them.

Very quietly, Josh started crying.

“Am I in trouble?”

Dean sighed.

“Nah, kid. Just… no more magic, okay? Maybe when you’re older. And just, as a general rule, never do a summoning unless you know for sure what’s gonna show up.”

Sam felt like he should add something or do something, but he didn’t know what, so he just knelt down and ruffled the kid’s hair. Josh gave him a shy smile.

Mr. Carmichael looked like he was maybe going to revisit the ‘not in trouble’ statement after the hunters left, but for now, he just fixed Dean with a big smile.

“Can I speak to you privately for a moment? Your man can wait for you down by the car.”

Sam knew when he was being dismissed, and left them alone without further hinting. Maddie gave him a little wave as he passed, and he waved back. Her children were climbing onto the topiary and laughing. Sam wondered if Josh was ever going to be like that. Probably not.

It didn’t take Dean long to join him. He slammed the car door and punched the radio knob to shut off the music. Sam gave him a look but Dean ignored him, pulling back out onto the thoroughfare and taking the on-ramp at ten miles over the limit.

Dean looked like he was settling in for a nice long silent sulk, but the car ruined it after about five minutes by cheerily setting off the ‘ _ding!’_ that meant they were low on gas. Dean slammed on the brakes, veering onto the shoulder, and slamming the car into park. And then for good measure, he punched the steering wheel.   
Sam raised an eyebrow, a silent ‘ _what’s wrong?’_ that he didn’t really expect an answer to.

Dean reached into his pocket, pulling out a fifty and eyeing it like it offended him.

“Here,” he said, handing it over to Sam. “This is yours. I’ll get you a cut of the total fee once Garth transfers it.”

Sam stared at it. He’d never held so much money in his life. He handed it back to Dean, who didn’t take it. He tried putting it back in Dean’s pocket and Dean pushed him away.

“Don’t. Just, fucking don’t. That fucking tool gave it to me as a _tip,_ on account of what a _good thing_ I was doing, taking on a slave with a disability. Like I was doing you a _favor,_ like you’re some kind of _charity case,_ just… ugh!”

Sam looked down at the fifty. He looked at Dean. Dean glowered at the windshield.

Sam leaned over and kissed him. Chaste and a little off-center, but then Dean turned toward him and Sam leaned forward and they melted together like they were made for it.

And then Dean pushed him away again, saying something like “you don’t have to” but he didn’t get to finish because Sam grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him back in. It was hot and insistent and Dean’s protests were buried when Sam’s tongue slipped into his mouth. Sam felt hands in his hair and that was better, that was how it was supposed to be.

He let go of Dean’s jacket and let his hands travel up his throat, cupping his jaw and running a thumb over one high cheekbone. He kissed Dean slowly, pulling back after each one, making a rhythm that Dean picked up easily. They were soft, calming, and the tension drained out of the other man until, finally, he leaned into Sam and just stayed there, foreheads pressed together.

“It’s fucked up.”

Sam stroked his thumb along Dean’s cheek. It was a silent acknowledgement, the best he could do.

A semi blew past them, laying on the horn, and it shocked Dean back to his senses. He pulled away from Sam, putting the car into drive and merging smoothly back onto the road.

“Sorry. This is just getting to me. It’s stupid. You’re the one who’s living through it and I’m the one who’s reacting like a crybaby bitch.”

His voice was calmer. Sam was glad. He liked that Dean felt better and he liked that he’d been able to help.

As a side note, he liked kissing Dean.

He liked that Dean had just kissed him back, instead of trying to escalate or dominate or arouse. He’d just… responded.

It was nice.  

 

 

The gas station did not carry tapes. They did have a number of CDs, but the impala didn’t have a CD player. So Sam didn’t know what to buy.

Dean bought a cup of coffee, so Sam bought one too. He put sugar in it, and cream. Dean took his black, but Sam thought he might like cream and sugar.

He made the coffee how he wanted, and he paid for it with his own money, and then he put the change in his pocket.

Dean kept looking at him and Sam realized he was smiling.

Maybe that’s what made Dean start smiling too.

When they got back in the car, Dean turned the music back on.

The tape deck served up Metallica’s ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ and after a while, Dean started singing.

Sam thought he could listen to Dean sing forever.

He wished he could sing too.  

 

 

Victor shuffled through the quickly-growing pile of paperwork on his desk. He’d checked up on “John Wesson” and found that the official records matched Dean’s file exactly. Sale dates, purchase prices, everything, all registered and authorized, neat as you please. Anyone looking through this would see a story about a down-on-his-luck man who traded his freedom for twenty grand and went on to make something of himself as a slave.

_Sam_ Wesson, on the other hand, was a kid who’d been bounced between twenty school districts before vanishing just before his twelfth birthday. The last school district filed a token truancy report, but everyone assumed he’d simply moved on.

After that, there was no record of him until he was eighteen, at which point he got a driver’s license and started accumulating speeding tickets, DUIs, and defaulted payday loans from a colorful assortment of cities and states. Victor called the police department in Sioux Falls and had them send over the arrest record.

The booking photo was the man on Sam’s title. Ten years more haggard, but definitely the same man.

He called Sioux Falls back.

The man who answered double-checked the case file and confirmed that yes, the man in the photo had been booked under the name of Sam Wesson and yes, his official identification did list him as twenty one at the time of booking.

“He look a little old for twenty one?” Victor asked.

“We’ve got a lot of meth out here,” the officer answered. “And honestly? We booked him for drunk and disorderly. He slept it off, paid his fine, and left town. We didn’t exactly need to assign a detective.”

That raised the question of why the Salina police department was looking into a three-year-old case in Sioux Falls, and Victor thanked the man and hung up.

The most recent record of Sam Wesson was in Seminole Florida, where he’d been brought in three weeks earlier on a vagrancy charge.

The officer who picked up the phone in Florida seemed to be having a much better day than he was. He told her that Sam Wesson was wanted for questioning in a possible case of identity theft. She seemed pretty confident that he’d turn up again before long, and promised to have her guys keep an eye out.

All that was left was convincing a judge to issue an arrest warrant.

Oh, and the troubling issue of Sam’s last owner.

Victor dug out the bill of sale. It didn’t give him a lot of information. Name, address, sale price. Dated six months ago.

Depending on what Sam told him, there might be enough evidence for a search warrant. There might not. It depended on the judge. It was an election year, not a good year to make enemies of wealthy taxpayers. Slave rights were a touchy issue, and careers had been made and broken on the subject of acceptable discipline.

Victor reached for the mug of coffee.

Empty.

Again.

He cursed the unreliability of the mug, and headed for the break room.

His phone buzzed.

“ _Headed back from the hunt. You got a time tomorrow?”_

Dean.

He texted back.

_“ASAP.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The kink_meme boards aren't open yet. I has a sad. But, it means you get a chapter. 
> 
> The reaction I got last time was "MOAR VICTOR" so, here you go. 
> 
> Trigger warning: shameless self promotion ahead. 
> 
> I have a favor to ask. I filled a prompt earlier this month which called for showering but "nothing sexual in it, no Wincest or Wincestial urges, just three brothers."   
> So I did my best and then yesterday Husband says he read it and it gave him a "confused boner." Because of "the way I described stuff." (Wut.) 
> 
> It's just a little shortie but I would really really appreciate it if you guys could [ take a look](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6003850) and tell me what you think?   
> No pressure. I'll still love you all to bits no matter what.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter switches POV a few times. Too small to split it up into three chapters. Be warned.

Sam’s bedroom used to belong to Dean’s father.

They’d gotten in late and Dean had realized he hadn’t cleared the room, but Sam didn’t care and Dean left him to it and retreated to his own bedroom.

Sam’s room was huge. It was huge and it was empty. He was used to sharing a bed with at least one other person. When he had his own bed, he’d always been able to hear the other slaves around him, breathing easy and talking in low voices.

This room was silent.

And the bed was too big.

Sam pushed it into the corner and lay with his back to the wall, clutching a pillow to his chest and trying to sleep. The silence was oppressive. Every creak or rustle sounded out like a gunshot.

He finally gave up and crept out into the hallway with a blanket.

Dean’s bedroom door was open a crack, but Sam didn’t dare wake him up. Instead, he settled down in the hallway outside the door. He leaned his head against the doorframe. He couldn’t hear Dean, but he knew he was there, and that was enough.

He’d have to wake up and go back to his own room before Dean woke up. Sam had a feeling his owner would be upset to find him sleeping in the hallway. He didn’t need to know.

 

The next thing he knew, there was sunlight streaming in through the windows and the sound of movement in the kitchen. Dean’s bedroom door was open, and the bed was empty. Sam kicked himself. He should have woken up.

He got to his feet a little uncertainly. His left leg was asleep all the way from his foot to the back of his ass. He shook it, and grimaced at the pins and needles.

He folded the blanket into neat eighths, put it back in his room, and then limped his way out to the kitchen.

“Morning, princess!”

Sam dropped his eyes.

“What’s the issue, pea under your mattress?”

Sam shook his head. Here in the daylight it seemed impossible to say something like ‘ _I can’t sleep by myself.’_

Dean watched him a minute to see if he would elaborate, and when he didn’t, the hunter carried on.

“So Victor wants us down this morning as soon as possible. It’s about two hour’s drive and we’ll probably be there a while, so eat up.”

Dean was making eggs. Sam suddenly wasn’t hungry. It was one thing to tell Dean what had happened. It was a different matter to tell the police. He’d do it if Dean made him.

For the first time in a long time, Sam thought about where his father might be. What he’d think of what his son had become.

Sam could remember his father’s drunken rants about faggots and cocksuckers and how if Sam ever turned out like that he’d strap him straight.

How John would look at him if he knew. If he knew his son had pleasured so many men he’d lost count.

Sam’s eyes burned. He stared at the floor and didn’t look at Dean.

They’d track his father down and Sam would have to stand up and condemn him for all this and if his father argued back Sam would have nothing to say because he’d done it willingly, he’d done it all willingly.

And Azazel. How was Sam supposed to face him and tell him how to treat his slaves? He’d done it once and been punished. He’d learned his lesson, he _had,_ he didn’t need to learn it again.

Sam rubbed his hand over the barcode tattooed on his forearm. They’d done it when he was sixteen, so it wouldn’t be distorted when he grew. Or so they said.

The code was his number, he was registered, so he could always be returned to his owner. It identified him as property, as goods.

And now Dean wanted him to stand up and tell his owners they _couldn’t_ and that they were wrong and that a slave knew better.

Nothing would come of it.

That’s all.

They’d go talk to Victor and Sam would go through the whole humiliating story and Victor would nod and understand. He’d explain to Dean that Azazel could do whatever he wanted with Sam, he had the right, he _owned_ him. Wasn’t that the whole point? And Dean would be upset but Sam could fix that, show him it was alright.

And Sam would tell Victor that he didn’t mind being sold early. It gave him a head start on his training and made him more valuable. So there was no need to find his father or his original owners because they hadn’t really done anything wrong. Victor would understand that and he’d be able to explain it to Dean.

 

Sam wasn’t hungry but he ate what Dean gave him because Dean wanted him to eat it. He did the dishes and stayed out of the bathroom while Dean showered, and then he took his own turn. He turned the water to cold, jarring cold, and it kept his mind focused. He was shivering by the time he was done, but his stomach was settled and he wasn’t so worried.

Victor was going to be disgusted with him, but he wouldn’t hit him. Not while Dean was there. And Dean wouldn’t hit him. And even if Dean was disappointed, Sam could make it up to him. And even if Dean did come around and decide to act like Sam’s other owners, that was okay too. Sam could learn what he liked and go right back to being the exemplary obedient slave he’d been before Azazel.

It was all going to be fine.

He dressed in the clothes that Dean had bought him and went back out to the living room.

Dean was waiting.

It was all going to be fine.      

 

 

 

 

Never in his life had Victor seen such a large man look so small.

The resemblance between Sam and John was even more obvious in person, but where John had stared into the camera with his eyes narrowed and his chin raised, Sam kept his eyes on the floor. Victor had been dealing with slaves for years and for him, the evidence of classical training was so obvious it could have been written across Sam’s forehead. That was good. Trained slaves were predictable. Easier to work with.

He shook Dean’s hand, and after some hesitation, Sam’s. He offered them a cup of the shitty break room coffee, which they declined, and then he lead them back into a conference room. He didn’t do these types of interviews in the interrogation rooms. He got better responses in the conference rooms. Probably something about the framed drawings of police cars that they’d gotten from the local elementary school. It put people at ease.

He set up the tape recorder. Sam raised an eyebrow.

“It’s to record the questions, anything I say, anything Dean says, things like that,” Victor explained. “As your owner, Dean has the right to stay through the duration of this interview. If you think it would be easier to answer questions without him here, you may say so, and he will have the option to leave. Do you understand?”

Sam withdrew a pad of paper and a pencil. He scratched down a single line.

“ _Yes. It would not be easier if he left.”_

“Understood. Would you please sit down, Sam?”

Sam took the seat across from him. His back was straight, his eyes down, his hands palm up on the table. Victor guessed that if he looked under the table, he’d see Sam’s knees were exactly at shoulder width.

“You can relax, Sam.”

They both knew he wouldn’t, but Victor liked to offer anyway. He slid over the small stack of photocopies, with the title on the top.

“What can you tell me about these?”

Sam looked at the title.

“ _This is my father. The information matches my memory.”_

“Does the sale date match your original sale date?”

Sam nodded.

“Do you remember your social security number or birth date or mother’s name or any other identifying information we can use to look up your records?”

Sam wrote down a date, followed by the word ‘Mary.’ He didn’t know his social.

“Thank you. Can you go through the rest of the sales documents and tell me if they’re accurate to the best of your knowledge?”

Sam examined them one at a time, nodding at each. Azazel’s was the last in the pile. Sam swallowed, then nodded once again.

“This is correct? You were sold to Azazel Jabel on this date? Six months ago?”

Sam nodded again. He was starting to get a tenseness in his jaw that Victor wasn’t sure he liked.

“Sam, could you talk when Azazel bought you?”

Sam nodded.

“Can you tell me how you lost that ability?”

Sam picked up the pen. He looked at Dean.

“Tell him.”

Sam started to write.  

 

“ _We got sedatives sometimes in the food. It helped us stay calm during more demanding duties. During one of these times I was taken to a room with bright lights, and I was given a mask to breathe into. Afterward there was pain in my throat, and I couldn’t talk.”_

“Was it a surgery?”

Sam nodded.

“Can you tell me how you know for sure?”

Sam hesitated.

“ _Azazel talked about it afterward. He had specific punishments he preferred for disobedient slaves. Devocalization was one.”_

“Were there any other slaves in Azazel’s home that were devocalized?”

Sam shrugged.

“I’d like to show you a photo. Can you tell me if you recognize this man?”

Victor slid the photo across the table. It was cropped from the original, only the head visible in the shot. The man in the picture might have been asleep. Victor knew better. He had the feeling Sam knew better, too.

Sam looked at the picture for a moment, then slid it back, shaking his head.

“You said there were specific punishments Azazel used. Can you tell me some of the others?”

Sam swallowed, his fingers tightening on the pen.

“ _The usual. Flogging, whipping, caning. Sometimes electricity. He used restraints if he needed them. Slaves who looked like they might run were restrained thoroughly. Sometimes it was painful because they were very tight or restrictive. Sometimes there was a little bit of nerve damage afterwards, because of how he’d tighten them. Sometimes”_

Here Sam paused. He wrote a line, then crossed it off, going over it several times. Finally he tore the page off and crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. He started again on the next page.

“ _Sometimes he’d burn us. A lot of slaves were branded, but the punishment burning was different. And sometimes the flogs had knots with wire. It would draw blood from several places. Not very often. It left scars, put slaves out of commission for a while.”_

“Jesus fuck,” Dean breathed. Victor shot him a look. It wasn’t helpful to react like that. Slaves, even abused ones, were usually loyal to their owners. They’d defend their masters if they got the idea that their stories were upsetting people.

“Anything else that involved a doctor or medical professional?”

Sam looked unsure.

“ _Azazel said that other slaves who spoke out had their tongues removed. He said I was lucky to keep mine. He might have been lying. One woman was blind. Might have been an accident. Someone else was missing part of his ring finger, but he wouldn’t say what happened. We didn’t tell stories.”_

Sam stopped writing, returning his hands to the waiting position and staring down at the paper.

“Sam, we have a nurse who works here, and I’d like to have him take some photographs of you. It might be several months before anything comes of this, and by that time, you’ll have healed. Would you be willing to let him photograph you?”

Sam looked to Dean. Dean looked at Victor.

“Don’t let him fool you, he’s been trying to strip naked since the minute I got him home. Fucking nudist, I swear to god.”

Sam smiled a little at that. The hand closest to Dean twitched slightly before returning to its original position. Sam was still looking to Dean. Dean didn’t notice.

“He’s asking your permission,” Victor told him flatly. Dean looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Don’t ask me. Do you want your picture taken?”

Sam looked shocked for a second, then nodded.

Victor shut off the tape recorder.

“I’ll call Benny.”

 

 

 

 

 

Benny was a great sport about the whole thing.

It took Dean about five minutes to see through the wide smile and laughing blue eyes and realize that Benny saw this sort of shit a _lot._

“Gonna do your chest and back first, kay?”

Sam nodded and pulled his shirt over his head without further preamble.

Dean had looked Sam over when he’d first bought him, but he’d been looking for functional injuries. At the time, Sam looked a little like he’d fought a mud puddle and lost. Here he was clean and the room was well-lit and Dean realized that the marks he’d taken for strap welts were far, far, worse than that. He’d assumed the wounds had been inflicted that morning and would fade within a few hours. But they were still there, red and angry across Sam’s arms and shoulders and back. Two of them had broken the skin.

And he hadn’t realized.

He’d seen Sam naked and all he’d thought was ‘fuck that’s hot’ because it had been from the _front_ and Sam was gorgeous and pristine from the _front._

He hadn’t been paying attention.

And Sam hadn’t said anything because of _course_ he hadn’t.

Dean realized that Sam was staring at him and he smiled in a way that he hoped was reassuring but he was pretty sure wasn’t.

“You okay, brother?” Benny asked, and after a second, Dean realized that the nurse was looking at him, not Sam.

“Yeah. I just… I didn’t know.”

Benny stared at him a moment longer, then turned his attention back to Sam. Sam obediently opened his mouth so Benny could photograph the stud through his tongue.

Why was he still wearing that? He could have taken it out. Whenever he wanted.

Except Dean hadn’t told him he could. Hadn’t thought of it.

“You don’t have to keep that,” he blurted. Sam’s eyes flicked in his direction, but otherwise, no reaction.

“Anything below the belt I should know about?” Benny asked. Sam shook his head. Benny leveled his gaze at the taller man.

“Nothing? No injuries, nothing meddled with, nothing?”

This time, the look Sam gave him had an edge of desperation.

“ _Nothing out of line._ ”

“What does ‘out of line’ mean?” Dean asked. His voice was hollow and he could kick himself. Sam needed him to keep his shit together and instead he was sitting here clutching his fucking pearls.

Sam doodled on the paper for a second, then wrote “ _expected wear and tear?”_

“I think you should let Benny look,” Dean said, and Sam shrugged and promptly dropped his pants.

Benny took photos of the piercing, and the ladder of scars along the underside of his dick where Sam said he’d been pierced half a dozen times. Sam showed Benny the scar on his sack where they’d made the incision to sterilize him. Dean stayed on the other side of the room. He just couldn’t.

Sam was utterly calm, answering Benny’s questions like he wasn’t sitting naked in a police station letting a dude photograph the scars on his junk. Dean didn’t think he could do it, if their positions were reversed.

Benny asked when Sam had last had anal sex, not ‘if’ but ‘when’ and Sam answered it was the day before he was sold, and Benny asked how many partners and Sam wrote that he didn’t know because he’d been blindfolded and Dean couldn’t do it and had to go stand in the hall.

The hallway was tight and stuffy and he had to move and he went off in search of that coffee that Victor had talked about earlier.

He found Victor before he found the coffee.

“He okay?”

“Sam? Yeah, yeah, he’s taking it like a champ.”

Dean stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t look at Victor.

“How do you do this all day, man?”

“Honestly? Sometimes I don’t know.”

“I’ve seen some shit. I mean. I kill shit for a living. I’ve seen dead people. I’ve been involved in bloodbaths. But those were _monsters._ This…. what happened to Sam was because of _people._ ”

Victor sighed.

“Sometimes…. I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

“Tell me this is gonna end well, Victor. Tell me this bastard is going to jail.”

Victor shrugged.

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. If we can get a search warrant based on Sam’s testimony we might be able to take some other slaves into custody. If they’re as beat up as Sam says they are, we’ll be able to charge Azazel, but if it’ll stick? Who knows.” Victor eyed the hunter. “One thing I do know? He belongs with you.”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“Yeah right. I bought him at a flea market and I’ve been nothing but horrible to him since then. I don’t think he understands half the shit I’m trying to tell him. He’s always worried I’m mad. I think I scare the shit out of him.”

“You called me. It’s more than most people would have done.” Victor sighed. “You gotta understand, most of the time when these cases come across my desk, it’s too late to help the vic. The best I can do is try to punish the owner and most of the time that doesn’t happen either. So to get a live one in here, who’s in a safe place and can communicate with us? It’s a godsend. And you? You’re the best thing that could have happened to him.”

Victor’s phone chirped, and he glanced at it.

“Benny says they need you back.”

Dean rubbed his eyes.

“I just wanna take him home.”  

 

 

Dean didn’t make it back to Benny. He met Sam in the hallway, redressed and in handcuffs, being led along by another officer.

“S’cuse me? He’s mine,” Dean said, not at all defensively.

“Not according to the report I got,” the officer answered. “You got a registration?”

Dean’s blood ran cold.

“No. It’s only been a few days.”

“Well, this guy does. And he says, this slave’s been stolen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going to start happening very fast now.   
> I'm currently accepting guesses, prayers, and virgin sacrifices. 
> 
>  
> 
> Reminder: RandomActs Annual Melee of Kindness is this Friday. #AMOK2016 
> 
> Not too late to plan something nice.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for this chapter is [Little Lion Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E) by Mumford and Sons. In my head, that's pretty much Dean's theme song. 
> 
> In this chapter: all the exposition. Literally just a whole chapter of me explaining stuff at you. This is not my favorite chapter, at all.

Technically, the report said runaway.

Azazel had sent Sam off in the custody of a slave named Meg, and that was the last anyone had seen of either of them. Azazel’s report speculated that they had probably made a break for freedom together.

When Sam’s barcode was registered in the system, a flag had gone off and he was taken into custody.

Dean worked this information out of the front desk officer over the course of half an hour. She wasn’t supposed to give it to him, since Sam apparently wasn’t _his,_ but Dean was both persuasive and charming when he needed to be. And for this, he needed to be.

In the meantime, they had Sam locked up somewhere in the back and they wouldn’t let Dean see him. The officer said it was protocol. Dean told them where they could stick their protocols and the officer informed him that if he didn’t settle down she’d start asking hard questions about receiving stolen goods.

Which left Dean pacing the front lobby, texting Victor every twenty minutes and hoping to god that Azazel didn’t actually show up to claim Sam.

Victor wasn’t responding and every unanswered text made Dean’s stomach drop further.

“Isn’t possession supposed to be nine tenths of the law?”

The officer rolled her eyes.

“The registered owner will be here in an hour, Mister Winchester. You can work it out with him then.”

An hour. Fuck.

Dean was getting really sick of people calling him ‘Mister.’

He texted Victor again.  

 

It was actually closer to three hours before Azazel moseyed his ugly ass into the station, and he was even more of a smarmy douchebag than Dean imagined. He was one of those guys that left the top three buttons of his shirt open so everyone could see his straggly stupid chest hair. He was accompanied by a tall thin man in a suit, who Dean assumed was either a lawyer or Satan himself. Could go either way, honestly.

Azazel walked right past him, because why wouldn’t he, he didn’t know Dean from Adam.

“I’m here to pick up a runaway,” he told the officer at the desk.

“He’s not a runaway,” Dean said in a tone he definitely hadn’t been practicing all afternoon. “I bought him at the slave market in Salina. Last week.”

Azazel turned very slowly, looking Dean up and down before letting out a disbelieving “did you now.”

“Yes. I bought him off a brunette who gave me his title. You can’t have him.”

Azazel quirked an eyebrow.

“I don’t _want_ him,” Azazel said, leaving the ‘you filthy peasant’ unsaid but strongly implied. “He’s utterly worthless, but I don’t tolerate runaways.”

“He’s not a runaway.”

“So you’ve said. But he’s registered to me, so that’s something I’ll have to determine for myself.” Azazel waved a hand at Dean, signifying the conversation was over. “You can have him back when I’m done with him.”

“Like hell. You’re not taking him.”

The last phrase came out as a growl, and Dean was a little surprised at himself.

Azazel was not impressed. He turned back to the officer at the desk.

“I’d like him bound for transport. My agent can negotiate the necessary fees and paperwork.”

“You’re _not_ taking him,” Dean said again, and this time there was an edge of desperation in his voice, because the officer was handing forms to Satan/lawyer and no one was paying any attention to him at all.

“Mr. Jabel! I’m glad you made it.”

Sure, _now_ Victor was making an appearance. The agent breezed past Dean, extending a hand toward Azazel. Dean glowered.

“I just need you to verify a few small details and we’ll be able to get you on your way.”

Victor brought out the file folder with the photocopies Dean had sent him. The top page was the photo of Sam’s face, grainy and grey and terrifyingly empty.

“Can you verify that this is the record of the slave you reported as a runaway?”

Azazel flipped through the file. Victor glanced at Dean. Dean mouthed the word ‘ _traitor.’_ Victor shrugged.

“That looks right,” Azazel said, passing the file back to Victor.

“Excellent. Then you’ll be happy to know that local authorities just picked your slave up in Florida.”

Dean blinked.

“I was told he was here,” Azazel snapped.

“We had a mix-up. A slave showed up here with the barcode number you reported, but there must be some sort of mistake, because he’s clearly not the man described by the title you just verified. That man is in Seminole, being processed for transport. If you can get these forms filled out, we’ll have him delivered to your estate by the end of the week.”

Victor winked at Dean.

“If you’ll just come with me, Mister Winchester, I think we have some more details to discuss regarding your case.”

 

Sam was waiting in Victor’s office, rubbing the cuff marks on his wrists and looking entirely too calm for someone who just narrowly escaped hell.

Dean pulled him into a bear hug. He didn’t care how it looked. He didn’t care that he was ridiculously attached to someone he’d met less than a week ago.

Azazel wasn’t taking Sam.

Everything else was just details.

“Has anyone ever accused you of being the most impatient person on the planet?” Victor asked from behind him.

“Not for a while,” Dean said, still not quite ready to let go of Sam. “Anybody ever tell you that you should answer your fucking messages?”

“I was talking with a magistrate, it’s considered bad form.”

Sam’s head was leaning against his shoulder, not reciprocating, but not pushing him away, either.

“Mr. Jabel is going to be very distressed when he gets home and finds his estate’s been raided. Benny’s photos helped convince the magistrate that it was worth a search. She signed the warrant forty minutes ago. Local authorities are conducting the search as we speak.” Victor leveled his eyes at Sam. “If the others are half as bad as you, it’s likely that Azazel will be arrested when he gets home.”

Sam wriggled out of Dean’s grip, retrieving his notepad.

“ _They are._ ”

“Well, as much as I don’t want to say ‘good,’ that’s helpful.”

“So what was that about Sam being in Florida?”

“Sam’s not. John is.”

Sam’s eyes widened slightly. Victor gestured to the file.

“This file is an absolute clusterfuck and I don’t envy the battle you’re going to fight to get it sorted out. But the short version is, Sam has never been registered as a slave. The title you have here is for his father, and John’s been using fake identities to avoid anyone knowing. One of those identities happens to be Sam’s. ‘Sam Wesson’ has quite the record. The Seminole police department was happy to shake a couple trees once I explained the situation. Fortunately for us, John fell out of one of those trees, so we’ve got someone to hand over to Azazel.”

Sam was looking very pale.

“So… he can’t touch Sam,” Dean said slowly, wanting to make sure he was completely clear on the situation.

“No one can touch Sam,” Victor said with a sigh. “Sam’s a free man.”

 

Dean spent the next two hours on the floor, because Sam was sitting on the floor and Dean thought it might help to have someone down there with him. Dean’s primary reaction was relief, but Sam’s dial was set dead-center in the middle of ‘panic.’ He wasn’t writing, so Dean just sat next to him on the floor, their backs to the wall, and talked to Victor.

Dean had a lot of questions, most of which Victor wasn’t able to answer. He had a lot of work ahead of him. The owners who had purchased Sam could possibly be held liable for title fraud, but many of them had worked through agents or agencies and could claim plausible deniability when confronted with the obvious discrepancies in Sam’s title.

Victor explained that criminal prosecution would be unlikely, with crimes like battery and sexual assault being very difficult to prove afterward without documentation at the time. Which of course, they did not have.

The thought of all these people getting away with it made Dean’s stomach boil, but Sam took the news in stride. It occurred to Dean that Sam had never expected any kind of retribution, so it was no loss to him to be told he couldn’t have it.

The primary targets in Sam’s case were, of course, his first and last owners. Sam’s treatment under Azazel was documented perfectly. Dean still had the black and white portraits of Sam taken just before his sale to Azazel. The difference between them and Benny’s shots was obvious. Victor was of the opinion that they could turn a whole jury based just on those.

His first owners, the ones who had trained him, had no chance of claiming plausible deniability. They’d registered a man in his late twenties and then taken custody of a child. If they did it to Sam, they might have done it to others, as well. It was rare to find a slave who was young, healthy, _and_ Signed. And there was no shortage of children to be had for cheap. Turning one into the other was a matter of risk, and the payoff was high.

They’d used fake names, of course, but Sam’s trainer had been real. Victor thought they could probably pressure Abaddon to give up her business partners. She was a professional, but the threat of life in prison tended to loosen people’s professional ethics just a tad.

If she wouldn’t tell them anything, they’d subpoena Azazel to give up John, and see what he could tell them.

Sam let out a choked kind of sob at that, silent, but obvious from the heave of his chest and the tendons of his throat. Dean laid a hand on his back, making little circles, bringing him back into the room.

“Hey. You’re gonna be fine.”

Sam shook his head.

“Yeah you are. Hard part’s over.”

Sam did one of his silent little laughs. He still didn’t write anything. Dean glanced at the clock. It was nearly six thirty in the evening.

“Christ, what a day. Can I buy you a beer?”

Victor shook his head.

“I’ve got more work to do here. There’s a lot of leads to follow up on here.”

“Aw, come on. All work and no play-”

“Puts the scum of the earth in prison where they belong,” Victor finished firmly. Dean let it drop.  

 

 

Neither of them was really hungry, but they went through the motions anyway, finding a local diner and ordering the special when the waitress mentioned it. By the time she was gone, they couldn’t remember what it was.

They sat in silence until the food arrived (chicken fried steak, as it turned out) and while Dean made a half-hearted attempt to eat, Sam just pushed it around his plate.

Finally, he pulled out his notebook.

“ _I don’t know where to go.”_

“Wherever you want, dude, that’s kinda the point.”

“ _Tonight. I don’t know where to go.”_

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere tonight except home.”

Sam wrote a sentence, then yanked the paper back and kept writing.

“ _Can I come with you? Just for one night. I’ll give you the best lay of your life and be gone in the morning. I just need one night.”_

And under that.

“ _Please.”_

Dean read it over three times.

“Of course you’re coming home with me, stupid. I still owe you your cut from the Carmichael case, so you’ve gotta stay at least until the money clears. Then you can run off to wherever you’re going.”

Dean paused.

“Or, if you want, you can pick up some more cases with me. Just, you know, until you get situated. I’ve got the room, and I could use the help.”

He paused again.

“If you want.”

Sam nodded.

 

 

The next morning when Dean wakes up, Sam is sleeping in the hallway again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty hopefully that made sense to everyone. I took a couple law courses for my masters so I tried to build on my knowledge of civil/criminal procedures to figure out how this would work out. I'm not a lawyer or a cop but statistically probably at least one of you are? Let me know if I made any grievous errors. 
> 
> Next chapter: Sam begins adjusting to life as a free person. It's hard.   
> I'd like to put some physical intimacy in there, but I'm writing a sequel to 'bad game of pool' (christ that's a terrible title, I'd have tried harder if I knew it would get so fucking popular) and it's really hard to switch between the two.   
> Over there in yonder second tab, Dean's getting handcuffed and reamed by a group of anonymous strangers and after setting that scene I can't really just pop back over here and have him being all sweet with Sammy. I've gotta stop and give my mindset a couple hours to reset.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brought to you by Three Musketeers(tm), official sponsor of long and fluffy chapters. 
> 
> The soundtrack to this chapter is [ Ex's and Oh's ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhquAU3zR-w) by Elle King. Bonus video of all Dean's flirty smiles, compressed into one *extremely* subtextual video. It's heavily implied that Dean is a massive trollop, and don't we all just know that to be true?   
> Seriously, though, the song is great and the video is incredibly well done.

After four days, Dean started to realize he was in over his head.

He knew that if _he_ were just freed, he’d be having the kind of party they used to turn into mosaics. He’d get in his car and drive everywhere he’d ever heard of, just to say he’d been there. And when he got there, he’d eat _everything._

So he’d been prepared to spend the next couple days (weeks?) doing everything he could to facilitate whatever it was that Sam decided he wanted to do.

Except, as it turned out, what Sam wanted to do was stay in his room.

During the day, at least. During the day, Sam would stay in his room with the door open, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the door and watching Dean go about his business. Dean had taken to luring him out with promises of food, like Sam was a stray puppy that Dean was trying to befriend. He’d come out if Dean asked him to, but afterward, he returned to the doorway to watch.

At night, Sam came out of his room.

At first Dean thought it was him, that Sam was afraid to come out if he was there. But he spent four hours outside working on Baby and when he came back in, Sam was exactly where he’d left him.

And if Dean was the reason why Sam wasn’t coming out of his room, then it made no sense that morning after morning, Dean found him sleeping outside his bedroom door.

 

“You really should go outside,” Dean said eventually, and Sam got up and put on his shoes and the coat he’d borrowed from Dean and went outside.

It was three hours before he came back. His knees were muddy and he had a scratch above one eyebrow, but he looked happy. He kicked off his shoes and went into the laundry room and Dean debated the ethical considerations of whether to ogle him shamelessly when he came back out. His dry spell won out over his caretaker instincts, and when Sam walked back across the house in his boxers, Dean did in fact ogle him shamelessly. Sam smiled.

The next time Dean saw him, he was dressed in loose jeans and a sweater, and he was sitting in his doorway again.

“You can go out there whenever you want, you know.”

Sam shrugged.

 

 

Dean pushed the couch to the side of the room so Sam could see the tv from his room.

And he started talking while he worked.

At first it was stupid little comments, talking to himself or the items he was working with. Anything to break up the silence. He’d ask rhetorical questions like “where did the salt go” or “how did I mess that up?” But then he’d look over and Sam would be listening, and so he started telling Sam things.

He told Sam that the comics were the best part of the newspaper and afterward Sam took the paper back to his room and read it. He didn’t laugh.

He told Sam that Baby needed an oil change and it was gonna be a pain in the ass because he’d have to get her up on blocks.

He told Sam that there was a call out for the expulsion of a coven of witches, but they weren’t going because Dean was pretty sure that the client was just a busybody looking to irritate her neighbors.

He told Sam that the best way to make eggs was to make bacon first, because the pan was hot and slick and it made the eggs taste delicious. Sam nodded sagely and ate his breakfast.

He told Sam that _Die Hard_ was the best Christmas movie and that when Christmas rolled around he’d get a copy and they’d watch it. Sam retreated back into his room after that, and Dean realized he’d made a pretty big assumption.

On the night of the fifth day, Dean heard Sam come out of his room and shuffle down the hallway. He rolled over, looking out the doorway to where the other man was visible in the moonlight.

“What’s wrong with your bed, man?”

Sam startled, but didn’t answer.

“You gotta quit sleeping in the hallway. If you don’t like your bed, fine, you don’t have to sleep on it. But at least pick another bed or sleep on the couch or _something._ ”

Sam stood in the doorway for a very long time, watching him. And then he pulled the blanket around his shoulders and crossed over the threshold.

He climbed onto the other side of the bed, above the covers. He didn’t make a move to touch Dean, not even when Dean rolled over to face him. He just laid there, his blanket wrapped around him like armor.

“Thanks,” Dean said.

He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but he did.

 

The next night Sam joined him in bed again and Dean said “you can get under the covers if you want,” and Sam did.

That’s when Dean started to realize that Sam didn’t know how to ask for things.

Not out loud because obviously not out loud. And not on paper because he didn’t see himself as anything other than an imposition.

But Dean started to think it went deeper than that. Maybe Sam didn’t know how to ask for things because in his head, he didn’t know how to want things.

He could prefer things, maybe. Or be afraid of things. But he didn’t know how to pick something, out of all the world, and want it.

 

What should really happen, here, Dean thought, was that Sam should go see a therapist. Unfortunately, Dean came from a long line of men who swore by the ‘Jim, Jack, and Jose’ school of psychoanalysis, and after several frustrating hours on the internet trying to figure out where to even _begin_ looking for a shrink _,_ Dean gave up.

Instead, he started giving Sam choices.

Closed questions worked better than open ones. “Pizza or chili” got an answer, while “what do you want for dinner” got only a shrug. Movie titles were met with blank stares, but Sam definitely liked action more than comedy. He liked horror movies, the cheesier the better.

They weren’t Dean’s favorites but he played them anyway, everything from “Evil Dead” to “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.”

Sometimes, if Dean looked over at exactly the right moment, he could catch Sam laughing.

 

After a week, Dean came back in and declared that the weather was absolutely perfect for a bonfire, and he and Sam spent the rest of the afternoon building a brushpile. They dragged chairs outside and sat by the flames, moving in and out and left and right as the heat shifted and smoke changed direction.

Dean stripped a couple pine branches and they cooked hot dogs and marshmallows over the coals. Sam had never done it before, and didn’t know how to keep the marshmallows from burning. Fortunately he was one of that crazy minority who _prefers_ his food burnt to a crisp and still cold in the center.

Dean chalked it up to some fundamental shortcoming in his upbringing, but didn’t make a comment. He tried not to comment, ever since he realized that Sam was adjusting his preferences to fit what Dean found acceptable.

Dean told him not to, but Sam did it anyway.

The firelight made Sam’s face bright in the darkness, and he was eating his black marshmallow with such a childish look of happiness, Dean didn’t even realize he was staring until Sam’s looked up and met his eyes.

The look of happiness didn’t go away.

There was a smear of marshmallow on the corner of his mouth, and Dean told himself that he was _not_ going to lean it over and brush it off, because that would be _far_ too intimate. Sam was beautiful and wonderful and struggling and he didn’t need Dean making moves on him.

He didn’t get the chance to test his resolve because in that moment, Sam leaned over and kissed him.

His lips tasted like caramelized sugar and burnt marshmallows and Dean suddenly understood the appeal.

Sam pulled back, searching his face, looking for permission, and Dean gave it to him, pressing their lips together and licking at the burnt-sugar taste of Sam’s mouth.

 

 

That night Sam climbed under the covers of Dean’s bed and Dean said “you don’t have to, but you can come closer,” and Sam looked at him carefully in the dark. He reached out, laying an arm across Dean’s body, just below the ribcage. He didn’t come closer, not that night, but when Dean woke up in the morning, his fingers were twisted into the fabric of Dean’s shirt.  

 

On the eighth day, Garth messaged him to let him know the Carmichael funds had cleared. Dean told Sam that he’d need a way to cash checks, which meant government identification and bank accounts and a social security number and a driver’s license would probably be a good idea. Sam nodded and then went back in his room and closed the door and didn’t come out for a very long time.

 

On the ninth day, Sam got a phone call.

On Dean’s phone, of course, because Sam didn’t have one. He’d need one eventually, Dean realized, and then a posh British voice said “is he there or not?” and Dean was pulled back into the moment.

“Sorry, who’s this?”

“On what grounds are you asking?”

“The grounds that it’s my phone. How did you even get this number?”

“A little birdie at the Salina police department. Now please do put Sam on the line.”

Sam was watching from his doorway. Dean shot him a look and shrugged.

“It’s for you.”

Sam gave him a blank look. Dean put the phone on speaker.

“He’s here.”

“Lovely. Hello, Sam, my name is Bela Talbot and I’ve been informed that you might have a spot of legal trouble. I’d like to offer my services.”

“So you’re, what, like a lawyer?”

“Quite like one, yes, and if you don’t mind, I’m speaking with Sam now.”

“Did your little birdie mention that Sam can’t talk?”

There was a pause on the line.

“And why not?”

“His last owner had him devocalized.”

“Oh, brilliant!”

Sam’s jaw set and Dean did a ridiculous double take at the phone.

“I mean that’s awful, of course, poor man, must be terribly difficult for him, but for my purposes that’s quite good.”

“Okay, it’s gonna sound like I’m hanging up-”

“Oh don’t pout, Dean. This could work out well for you as well.”

“I fail to see how.”

“That’s alright, we can’t all be brilliant, it wouldn’t be fair.”

Sam let out a little laugh at that. Dean was glad Bela couldn’t hear.

“The report that I got says that Sam’s been sold to at least ten very wealthy owners. Can you verify that information?”

Dean looked to Sam. Sam shrugged and nodded.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Sam’s newfound freedom bodes badly for these owners. I’m sure you’re aware of the difference between slaves and free men and the legal protections for each? Our friend Sam has quite a few more than they anticipated when they purchased him. Or thought they did. Minor details, not important. What _is_ important is that each of these owners is now facing a veritable _cascade_ of civil and criminal charges, the outcome of which will depend wholly on how ignorant they can pretend to be regarding the workings of their own households. It’s going to be time consuming, expensive, and _terribly_ embarrassing for them,” Bela explained, not sounding the least bit sorry for any of it. “My guess is that they’ll be happy to pay a _substantial_ remuneration to keep it out of the courts, and by extension, the papers. I’d like to help negotiate the proceedings, in exchange for a percentage, of course.”

Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked thoughtful.

“I think he needs to think it over.”

“Of course. I’m available at this number twenty-four seven, when you reach a decision. Just to help the deliberation process along, let me give you a figure which I’ve negotiated in a similar circumstance.”

She told them. Dean gaped.

“Per owner,” Bela clarified.

“We’ll call you back,” Dean said, and hung up the phone. He looked to Sam.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“ _I could tell.”_

“Think we should work with her?”

“ _I think I’d like to talk to Victor.”_

Victor was pissed.

“She shouldn’t have been able to get your number. If I found out who gave it to her, they’re fired. I swear.”

“But in the meantime. Is she legit?”

“If she’s on your side. She’s an evil conniving bitch, but she’ll deliver you the world if you promise her a cut.”

“So, then, what, he should do it?”

Victor sighed.

“It’s a gamble. Settling out of court means exactly what it sounds like. Out of court. I can’t promise I can make any charges stick. To any of these guys. It’s possible you could pay a lawyer and spend years fighting this and none of them will ever see a day in jail. Or you might get lucky and you might get a jury who throws the book at one- or any- of them. I’ll help you as best I can, but Bela can promise results that I can’t. Ultimately, the decision is yours.”

Dean looked over at Sam. His brow was furrowed and his jaw was set. Dean changed the subject.

“Any news on Azazel?”

“No. His estate was raided the day you were here. A couple slaves were taken in but they’re reluctant to talk. Azazel still owns them, if they inform on him and nothing comes of it, he’ll be able to take them back. We’re working on it. We’ve also pulled Abaddon in. She’s a firecracker, says she can’t serve up any of her professional contacts without a subpoena. Once we get that, it’ll be our best hope for finding Sam’s original owners.”

Victor paused.

“You should also know that John’s been brought up from Florida. Azazel has him. He’s the registered owner, but technically, you have his title, Dean. Do with that what you will.”

Sam was pale. Dean thanked Victor and hung up the phone.

“Lot to think about.”

Sam nodded.

 

 

That evening, Sam came out of his room and helped Dean make dinner. He got a bag of peas out of the freezer and microwaved them without being asked. Or asking.

The progress of the peas.

Dean laughed a little too hard.  

Afterward they curled up on opposite ends of the couch and watched _Fifth Element._

 

“Do you know what state you were born in?”

Sam gave him a questioning look. He’d moved from the doorway to the couch, but he still spent most of his time just watching Dean do things. Right now, Dean was on the internet.

“If you want a driver’s license you need a social security card, if you want a social security card you need a birth certificate. If you want a birth certificate you need to put in a request to the vital records office in the state where you were born. So do you know?”

“ _Nevada._ ”

“Thanks.”

 

Dean made three phone calls to the Nevada Bureau of Vital Records and then started to seriously consider just getting Sam a fake identity. It would probably be easier.

 

After two weeks, Victor called to say that Azazel had been officially charged with a number of slave-related crimes. He wanted to know if Sam was willing to testify.

Sam nodded.

Victor wanted to know if they’d decided to work with Bela, and Dean said Sam hadn’t made a decision yet.

Victor had barely hung up before Dean got a call from Garth. Garth wanted them to investigate a chupacabra. Dean said he’d do it.

 

By the time Dean was done packing, Sam was standing by the door with his crooked-stitched duffle.

“You sure you’re up for this?”

Sam nodded.

 

It was five hours to Oklahoma. They stopped four times to get gas or take a piss or just walk around. Every single time, Sam went into the gas station and walked up and down the aisles like he was looking for something, but whatever it was, he never found it. Dean considered asking, but eventually just left it alone.

 

The barn was drafty and surprisingly cold for being stuffed full of cows. Sam and Dean were in the loft, waiting for the creature which had been breaking in and killing the animals. Dean had his shotgun, Sam was manning the flashlight.

And it was cold, so of course they were sitting close together. And of course after a while Dean started to get tired, and that’s why he leaned against Sam. And Sam was cold too, which was why he put his arm around Dean’s shoulders and held him there.

And it wasn’t romantic, not at all, sitting there hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. Sam was warm and solid but Dean was just cold and tired, that’s all. That’s why it felt so nice.

 

It ended up being a pair of peuchens instead of a chupacabra, but silver deer slugs work equally well on both, so it wasn’t a problem. Dean shot them twice and then he and Sam climbed out of the loft and built a bonfire to burn the corpses. There were no marshmallows this time, but Sam’s face was still bright in the firelight and Dean thought he could probably get used to this.

 

The farmer paid in cash, and when Dean handed Sam’s share over, Sam predictably tried to give it back. Dean dodged.

“ _I owe you for my purchase price.”_

“You don’t owe me for shit. Put that in your pocket and don’t make me fight you.”

Sam obeyed, then hesitated.

“ _Do you think I should take Bela up on her offer?”_

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

Dean frowned.

“The guys who bought you, I mean, they definitely fucked up. It took me, what, like four days to figure out something was rotten in Denmark? It wasn’t even that well hidden. You could have been free years ago except that they weren’t paying attention. Or didn’t care. And for that I think they ought to be punished. So Bela’s whole ‘settlement’ thing seems like letting them buy their way out of trouble. Like they’re above the law because they’ve got money.”

Sam nodded, looking thoughtful.

“On the other hand, you’ve gotta think about what’s best for you. With the kind of money Bela was talking about, you’d be pretty well set. You could buy your own house and do whatever you wanted. So I guess it’s like trading your past for your future.” Dean shrugged. “I guess you’ve just gotta figure out how much you want revenge.”

Sam had nothing to say to that, and the next day they drive home in an amiable silence, with Sam looking out the window and Dean singing along with the radio.

 

 

Sam eyed the storefront like he was staring into the gates of hell.

“So here’s what we do. We’re gonna go in there and we’re going to go up and down every aisle and you pick whatever you like and put it in the cart. I’ll do the same thing but I’m going _behind_ you. No cheating. And then whatever it all adds up to, we’ll split it. Deal?”

“ _You don’t need to do this. I’m fine with whatever you want to get.”_

“I know you are. But you need to learn what _you_ want.”

Sam’s diet, Dean had learned, had been well-balanced but monotonous. In households with a large number of slaves, the food preparation tended to be unspectacular and repetitive, focused more on mass production than flair.

Sam recognized pre-packaged salad mixes, but he didn’t know what whole red cabbage looked like. He knew Italian and Ranch and Caesar and was delighted to learn that there were alternatives. He was equally excited to find that green beans could be bought fresh instead of canned.

Sam knew apples and oranges but not plums or grapefruit. Neither of them knew what a pomelo was.

He learned that macaroni and cheese came in two colors. Dean wouldn’t let him buy Ragu pasta sauce. (“Sometimes you gotta splurge on the good stuff.”)

The spice aisle held his interest for a while, but Dean’s knowledge of exotic spices began and ended with garlic salt, so he was no help there, at all. He was equally useless in the ‘exotic foods’ section, where they kept things like ‘wasabi’ and ‘korma.’ Sam picked up a bag of rice and some pre-packaged meals with names like ‘satay’ and ‘masala.’

“ _What if they’re bad?”_

_“_ We’ll toss ‘em out and make something else. It’s allowed.”

Sam added them to the cart.

Sam wasn’t a fan of frozen premade meals, but Dean threw a couple pizzas in the cart. He added a bag of chicken nuggets and Sam raised an eyebrow.

“What? I’m a growing boy.”

Sam wanted fresh chicken and they had to get a glass pan because Dean had never needed one before. He also learned that ‘bread crumbs’ came in a cardboard tube. Then after that they had to go back to the pasta aisle to get alfredo sauce and spaghetti to go under the chicken.

By the deli there was a book rack with cookbooks and Dean put one of those in the cart, too. He’d been living on the same five meals for the last year, and that was fine when it was just him, but he wasn’t gonna do that to Sam, too.

They get distracted in the checkout line because Dean wanted a payday and Sam had never had one, which Dean was forced to investigate. Turned out Sam had never had a twix, either, or a snickers, or a milky way, or just about anything else. Dean ended up picking up one of everything Sam didn’t recognize.

“Having a favorite candy bar is an essential factor in developing an identity,” he announced when the cashier smirked at them. Sam looked skeptical, but what did he know, he didn’t even know what cabbage looked like.  

 

 

Sam was not as excited about his candy bar initiation as Dean would have hoped. Sam googled a recipe for chicken alfredo while Dean put the groceries away, and then he got to work slicing the chicken into thin strips. Dean started a pot of water for the spaghetti, and then got out the candy bars, peeling back the wrappers and carefully cutting off bite-sized pieces. Sam wasn’t even paying attention, which Dean couldn’t understand. If he were about to learn about the varied bounty of the Mars corporation, he’d be riveted.

“I think the snickers is a good solid place to start,” Dean concluded eventually, picking up a piece of the candy and holding it out to Sam. Sam grinned at him and shrugged, gesturing uselessly with his sticky hands.

“You’re not getting out of this that easy, open up.”

Sam did, giving every indication of nonchalance until Dean reached forward with the candy, and then Sam leaned forward, catching the tips of Dean’s fingers in his mouth. His eyes flicked upwards, looking at Dean with a smirk. His mouth was hot and soft, sucking the chocolate off Dean’s fingers.

And then he went back to cutting up the chicken like he hadn’t just treated Dean to a porno-level come on.

Dean sat back, dumbfounded.

“How is it?”

Sam chewed slowly, mulling over the taste. He shrugged.

“Want another one?”

That got Sam to grin.

 

 

After dinner, Sam got out his notepad.

“ _I’m going to say yes to Bela.”_

“You sure?”

Sam nodded.

_“You asked how much I wanted revenge. I don’t.”_

“You’re a better man than me. I don’t think I could ever forgive them.”

“ _They didn’t do anything I need to forgive.”_

Dean scoffed.

“Yeah, right. How do you even say something like that? They treated you like you were a _thing,_ some trophy they could just buy and keep around because they felt like it.”

Sam looked at him for a long moment.

“ _So did you.”_

“Yeah but I never, like…” Dean looked for the right word and couldn’t find it. “I never raped you.”

Sam shrugged.

“ _Neither did they.”_

“How can you even say that? Of course they did!”

“ _They didn’t force me. It was my job, so I did it.”_

“But you didn’t choose it.”

“ _Did you choose yours?”_

Dean blinked.

“That’s not the same. Nobody ever hit me with a strap because I wasn’t _sitting_ right.”

Sam looked taken aback. Dean thought maybe he’d gone too far. Sam wrote the next line very carefully, staring at it for several minutes before handing over the notebook.

“ _Does it make me weak if I miss it? The training?”_

“You miss getting hit?”

Sam shook his head.

“ _The training is based on obedience and trust. A slave is obedient because they trust their master. There are very clear expectations. The slave knows what is expected of them and they comply. Obedience leads to reward, disobedience leads to discipline. Always. Everything is very simple. Even the discipline isn’t bad, because the slave trusts their master to use it in the slave’s best interest. To further their training. It was like that with all my masters until Azazel. He hurt us because it amused him. None of the others ever struck me unless I deserved it.”_

“You never deserved it.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“ _I don’t know what’s expected of me any more. I don’t know how to tell when I’ve done something wrong. I don’t know how to make you happy.”_

Dean looked at the page for a long time.

“You’re not responsible for making me happy, man. You just focus on you.”

“ _I don’t know how.”_

“Well, you’re gonna learn. I’ll teach you. And if you do something wrong, I’ll call you a dumbass. That’s how you’ll know.”

Sam did one of his silent little laughs.

“ _And if I do something right?”_

“Then I’ll give you a big sloppy kiss,” Dean joked, rolling his eyes. Sam nodded.

“ _Okay._ ”

 

Oh. Well okay then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've said this before, but *next* chapter they're gonna have sex. Swearsies. 
> 
>  
> 
> I realized today that I'm a total dumbass and I did my running #AMOK yesterday. Day early.   
> Fortunately I didn't mention it to anyone because I felt like a total tool going into a homeless shelter and being like 'here's some stuff I bought cuz a hot angel told me to be nice to people today.' Seemed kinda shallow, I guess? Whatever, I'm sure it'll taste the same regardless of my motivations.   
> If you'd like a detailed breakdown of my fanfiction-inspired charity, [ here's my tumblr post about it. ](http://mailissa-blog.tumblr.com/post/140535007146/running-amok) Some of you have said you like the author's notes as much as the chapters, I'm taking you at your word here and plugging my tumblr. It's where I put my rambling. It's a ramblr. I'll see myself out. 
> 
> Updates on this should come a little faster now maybe? I finished the Dean-gets-gangraped-in-a-bar sequel so I can focus on this now.   
> When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian, sometimes I have to sit and think about what decision took me off the vet track and brought me to claiming responsibility for gangrape fanfiction _sequels._
> 
>  
> 
> One more thing: I discovered a disturbing trend this week. I ended with a cliffhanger two chapters back, and I got more terrified, heartfelt feedback than on any other chapter so far. That there is a direct and immediate personal benefit to playing with your hearts. I threaten Sam, you leave comments. 
> 
> I cannot unlearn this. You have done it to yourselves.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is the first episode of Fox's 'Lucifer.' If you haven't seen it: it's Twilight written as a crime drama with the part of Edward Cullen being played by the 10th doctor, and it is glorious.

“Oh, _fuck,_ Sam,” Dean moaned.

This was apparently a habit of Sam’s. After spending more than a week of sleeping together with little more than hand-holding, Dean was once again waking up to the feeling of Sam’s mouth on his dick.

Just like that morning at the hotel, Sam had wriggled his way under the covers while Dean was sleeping. And just like that morning, Dean was drawn slowly out of a dream by the feeling of being stroked and sucked and tongued and _god,_ Sam was good at that.

Dean pulled the blankets back, looking down at the other man. Sam looked up at him through his eyelashes, never taking Dean out of his mouth, and _god_ , those eyes. The muscles in his shoulders and back were flexing, shifting under his skin as he stroked the base of Dean’s shaft, and Dean reached out for him, wanting his hands on Sam’s skin.

“You’re gonna make me cum,” Dean breathed, and Sam did a little silent hum in the back of his throat, and _fuck_ did Dean come.

“Mmm, c’mere,” Dean said, laying out his arm. Sam obediently climbed up next to him, laying with his head on Dean’s shoulder and their legs tangled together under the blankets. Dean leaned down, kissing Sam and tasting himself on the other man’s mouth. The length of Sam’s body was pressed up against his, Sam’s erection obvious against Dean’s hip. Dean pulled him close, rubbing against him, and Sam’s fingers tightened on him.

Sam’s arms were around him, pulling him close, and Dean slipped one leg between Sam’s, pressing up gently and rolling his body against Sam’s. Sam ground against him, moaning silently, and deepened the kiss.

Dean finally pulled back for air, and stopped dead.

The look on Sam’s face was that same, detached emptiness he’d seen before.

“Hey! Hey, where are you? You here with me?”

The light came back to Sam’s eyes, and he stilled. And then it flickered, went out, and he pulled Dean back toward him.

Dean backpedaled so hard he nearly fell out of bed.

“Whoa, hold up. What is that. What are you doing.”

Sam’s eyes closed, his jaw clenched, and then that, too was gone.

“Get your pencil, man, we’re talking about this.”

Sam fetched it off the nightstand.

“ _I’m sorry.”_

“Don’t be sorry. Just help me understand.”  
“ _I wanted to do something for you._ ”

“And I appreciate that, I do, but you don’t have to. I’ve told you that. You don’t have to do that for me.”

“ _I wanted to.”_

“So what’s with the whole ‘out of body experience’ thing you had going on there? It’s a bit freaky.”

Sam looked at the ground. At the door. Anywhere but Dean.

“ _It’s a meditation technique. For separating mind from body. It’s to help slaves get through difficult experiences.”_

“So why use it? If you wanted to- you know. Then why avoid it.”

“ _I wanted to use my mouth on you. I wasn’t expecting you to want more.”_

“I was just gonna return the favor, man.”

Sam nodded.

“That’s what you didn’t want to do?”

Sam nodded again.

Dean sighed, ran his hands through his hair.

“Okay. Don’t do that. Hard rule. _Do not_ fucking meditate yourself out of your body while we’re- I dunno, ‘being intimate’ or whatever. If you don’t like what I’m doing, you make me stop. Fucking punch me in the nose if you have to. I don’t care. Okay?”

Sam’s look was indecipherable. Dean sighed.

“Look… you’re good. That was awesome. Thank you. I was trying to say thank you. By returning the favor. I thought you’d like it. That’s all.”

Sam’s jaw set.

“ _I don’t like it.”_

“Like what?”

“ _Getting touched. Like that.”_

“Okay. That’s okay. We don’t have to do that. It’s fine.”

Dean paused.

“The way we’ve been sleeping, though, that’s okay?”

Sam nodded.

“And the kissing and stuff?”

Sam nodded again.

“So basically, I should just keep my hands off your junk and we’ll be okay?”

Sam hesitated, then nodded again.

“Okay. That’s okay. I can do that. I’m not gonna lie and say I understand it, like _at all,_ but I can do it.”

Dean paused.

“Is there anything you _do_ want?”

Sam leaned over and kissed him once, open and tender, and then he pulled away and left the room.

 

 

“So, for all your later gargantuan-ness, you were a surprisingly small baby.”

Dean waved the letter in Sam’s direction.

“Congratulations, partner, you’re one step closer to being a real boy.”

Sam snatched the paper and looked it over. It wasn’t really that impressive, just an authorized copy of a vital record. It had Sam’s parents’ names on it, some illegible signatures, half a dozen stamps, and some information about how big Sam had been as a baby. Or how small, as the case may be.

Sam was staring at it like it was the word of God.

“I’ve got a fireproof box in the closet. When you’re done ogling it, you can keep it in there.”

Sam grinned up at him.

“ _I’ve never seen this._ ”

“Well, your dad doesn’t really seem like the type to keep sentimental stuff like that around.”

Sam’s expression turned dark. The topic of his father was one they’d been avoiding, with some success, ever since Victor had called to say he’d been delivered to Azazel.

“Bela’s supposed to be coming by today, right?” Dean asked, changing the subject. Sam nodded.

Sam and Bela had been communicating through email. Dean had gotten Sam set up with his own email address, so he could talk to people without having to use Dean as a mouthpiece. So far, Sam had talked mostly with Bela, but there were things she insisted on doing in person, and so they’d set up a meeting.

 

Bela turned out to look exactly how Dean pictured her. She pulled up the drive in a sleek black vehicle that looked like it had never driven on anything but clean asphalt. Bela stepped out of the vehicle and surveyed the yard with an eyebrow raise that Dean could practically _hear._ She was dressed in neat business attire, light ruffled shirt over a black pencil skirt, and paired with the kind of makeup and glasses Dean associated with naughty librarians in porn. As she made her way across the driveway, Dean noted that her black heels were at least three inches high. And shiny. He grinned.

He opened the door before she could knock, and she walked in before he could invite her in. She was carrying a heavy black briefcase, which she set on the kitchen table and opened with a _snap._

She looked up at the two men, looking between them.

“Which of you is Sam?”

Sam raised a hand, hesitantly, like he thought maybe he was going to get in trouble.

“Right. You’re with me then. Over here.”

She gestured to the other seat, and began pulling stacks of paper out of the case. Dean noted that she’d brought her own pens, sleek black things that looked like they probably had to be special ordered from Paris.

“So according to what I’ve found, you’ve actually had eleven separate owners, not counting the originals and your most recent. The authorities in Salina are already pursuing criminal charges against those two, so for our purposes they’re out of reach. The others, though, have so far managed to avoid being entangled in this mess. My bet is that they will pay handsomely to keep it that way.”

Bela pushed a stack of paper toward Sam.

“Here you are then. This is your agreement to never seek criminal or civil restitution against the owner named, in exchange for a substantial remuneration offered in exchange for services performed. This remuneration alters the contract between the two of you into one of mutual benefit, rendering null any future accusations of improper actions vis a vis the unfortunate circumstances of your, shall we say, _subjugation._ In addition you agree not to speak publicly about actions taken while under their employ up to and including actions which may violate local, state or federal laws.” Bela gave him a knowing look. “Barring legal compulsion, of course.”

Sam nodded and wrote something down.

“Backtrack for the morons in the room?” Dean interjected.

Bela looked over her glasses at him.

“Sam agrees to reframe the relationship as one of employment rather than enslavement. His previous owners pony up some back-pay and in exchange, Sam agrees not to drag their name through the mud. I’m assuming some of the details of his experiences are rather sordid.”

“And you get a cut of that back pay.”

“In exchange for negotiating the appropriate fees for Sam’s caliber of service, naturally.”

Bela’s smile was distressingly perfect.

Sam tapped the notebook with his pen, drawing Bela’s attention back to him. Her eyes widened marginally as she read through the page.

“My my, we have done our homework, haven’t we?”

Sam nodded.

“As you’ve noted, these are eleven distinct cases. I’m proposing a sliding percentage based on the number I’m able to win. It’s quite standard for this sort of case. I’ll also be negotiating payment plans and setting up escrow accounts. You know, the standard rider services.”

Sam started writing again.  

 

 

It took them four hours to go through Bela’s ream of contracts. Dean lost the thread of the conversation about ten minutes in, both because he was missing Sam’s half, and because he had no idea what Bela was saying.

He tried googling phrases he was able to catch, but the legal terminology lead him down rabbit holes of Wikipedia links that got very deep, very fast.

What did interest him was how many of the links were already purple.

Dean knew Sam had been spending time on the laptop, but he assumed he’d been doing normal internet stuff, like reading news or looking at pictures of cats.

He opened the search history on the laptop, and scrolled through. And scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled.

Bela wasn’t kidding. Sam had been doing his homework.

Contract law, chattel law, employment types, labor laws, tort types, wage guidelines, court records… Sam had been looking into all of it. And now he and Bela were working through about a billion contingencies and by the sounds of it, Sam was holding his own.

Dean was impressed.

He clicked through onto a page of court cases regarding freed slaves, and was in over his head before he even got through the first page. One thing was for sure.

There was money at stake, here. A lot of it.  

He was spared the indignity of the second page by the sound of his phone buzzing. The caller ID said Victor.

He ducked into his room before answering.

“Vic?”

“Hey, Dean. Is Sam around?”

“Yeah. He’s got a visitor, though. He decided to take Bela up on her offer, and they’re in the kitchen discussing terms.” Dean dropped his voice. “Victor, that woman is terrifying.”

Victor laughed.

“It works to her benefit, in her line of work. She’s not an enemy I’d want to have.”

“Well, hopefully it works out for Sam. What’s new on your side, anything?”

The mirth dropped out of Victor’s voice.

“Can you bring him in tomorrow?”

Dean’s blood ran cold.

“Why?”

He’d gotten Sam home, he wasn’t giving him up again. Not without a fight.

“We have someone here who wants to see him.”

“Who is it, Victor.”

There was an edge of steel to his voice. Victor sighed.

“We got Azazel’s financial records, and we’ve pinned down the doctor he was using to have his slaves… altered. We’ve pulled him in and charged him and he’s agreed to cooperate with us, but not until he’s seen Sam.”

“Why Sam?”

“As far as we can tell, Sam is the only… uh... _patient_ that we can directly connect to him. The others have all been sold or are otherwise out of our reach.”

“Which doesn’t explain why the doc wants to see him.”

“That I can’t explain. All I can say is, he’s clammed up tight and won’t tell us anything else until he sees Sam. So can you bring him in?”

Dean cracked the door, looking out to where Sam and Bela were still seated at the kitchen table.

“I’ll ask him if he’ll go. We need to make a run into town anyway. I’m not promising anything. He’s not mine any more, if he doesn’t want to talk to this quack, he doesn’t have to.”

“I know, Dean.”

Dean sighed.

“Sorry, Vic. I don’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just… there’s a lot of shit happening. He’s, uh… I don’t know if he’s gonna be okay.”

“He’s in good hands.”

Dean scoffed.

“Yeah. Okay. Oh. That reminds me. Do you know what his social is?”

 

By the time Dean got off the phone, Bela was gone.

He should really tell Sam about the doctor, but he couldn’t find a way to bring it up.

Sam retreated to his place on the couch, taking the laptop with him.

“You read all that stuff? Like in the last week?”

Sam looked up at him and nodded.

“And it made sense to you?”

Sam nodded again. Dean collapsed onto the other side of the couch.

“Tell you what, you’re a lot smarter than me. You’re way too smart to stay a hunter. You should go to school and be like a doctor or president or something.”

Sam smiled, just a little smirk, but there was a twinge of sadness in it. Dean didn’t say anything further.

 

 

“So tomorrow, I’m thinking we should go back to Salina.”

It was late, and dark, because Sam didn’t talk in the dark and Dean was a coward.

He’d been lying there long enough for his eyes to adjust to the dark, and even still, all he could see was a vague outline of Sam’s body next to his.

“We should see about getting you a social security card. And, uh… and Victor called today.”

Sam didn’t respond, because of course he didn’t, because he couldn’t.  

Not in the dark.

“They’ve got the doctor. The one who, uh… who worked on you. And he wants to see you. Says he’ll cooperate with the police if he can talk with you. You don’t have to. But think about it? Victor thinks it would be helpful. If he… helped. I guess.”

Sam didn’t react, not for a long time, and Dean wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“Sam?”

Sam’s body shuddered and Dean reached for him. His fingertips brushed the edge of Sam’s bicep and that set him off. He curled in on himself, shivers racking down his body and Dean realized he was crying. He pulled his hand back.

“Hey, hey, you don’t have to go. You don’t have to. It’s fine. You don’t have to.”

And in that moment Dean hated the man who had done this. The man who had left Sam shaking and terrified and unable to even ask for help.

He didn’t know how to fix this. He wanted to reach for Sam, to hold him close and tell him he was safe, but he didn’t know how Sam would react and he didn’t want to make it worse.

“I’m here,” he said finally, uselessly, and eventually Sam stilled. His breathing evened out, and finally slowed into sleep.

Dean listened for a long time.

 

 

He woke up late, and morning sun was already streaming in from the hallway. Sam was gone, and his half of the bed was cold.

Dean wasn’t surprised to find the other man up and dressed, sitting in the corner of the couch with the laptop on his legs. Sam didn’t look up at him.

Dean’s phone buzzed.

When he picked it up, he saw one new text message. The caller ID was listed as Sam’s email address. The message read simply “ _Good morning.”_

“Aren’t you clever?”

Sam looked up then, grinning.

Dean’s phone buzzed again.

“ _I’ll go.”_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, *technically* there was sex in this chapter. I did not lie. 
> 
> If you're really really desperate to see our boys bumping uglies (it's a colloquialism, I'm sure their endowments are majestic and aesthetically pleasing) I have written no fewer than *three* wincest PWPs this weekend. That was my Melee of Kindness Addendum- aside from the shelter donations, I also filled three spnkink_meme requests, including one which I had to do because someone requested bottom!Sam. Three completely different scenarios, with three totally different moods, and the one thing in common is that Sam and Dean are boning, vigorously and repeatedly. 
> 
> But anyway. Back to this fic. 
> 
> Dean's a dick for dropping the news like that. It's like breaking up via text message. He knew Sam was gonna be upset and he didn't want to deal with it, and I don't even think he realizes he's a dick for taking away Sam's ability to react. 
> 
> Why does the doc want to see Sam? It's a mystery, truly a mystery.   
> Speculation welcome. 
> 
> A friendly wager: if anyone guesses right I'll show you my terrible, terrible drawing of Castiel fighting his way through hell. We'll bond over my total lack of spacial perception.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is Beck's [I think I'm in love.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7WdKAvZ2ec)
> 
> Uh... this chapter should have a trigger warning but I don't wanna say what it is because it's kinda a spoiler? If you're subject to day-ruining triggers go ahead and check the end notes. 
> 
> Everybody else read on. 
> 
>  
> 
> Note that this chapter changes POV halfway through.

They were already in the car by the time it occurred to Dean that he should call Victor and tell him they were coming.

He was surprised to know that Victor already knew. Apparently Dean wasn’t the only one getting text messages that morning.

 

Sam was much faster with a keyboard than he was with a pen, and Dean’s phone had been buzzing all morning as Sam fired off message after message. Sam had always seemed like the strong, stoic type, but apparently that had more to do with the difficulty of communication than any part of Sam’s personality. So far this morning they’d discussed Bela’s visit, the weather, what to have for breakfast, what route to take to Salina, and a dozen other topics all carefully unrelated to Sam’s upcoming meeting.

“What did you do outside?” Dean asked when the conversation lulled. “When you came back all muddy.”

Sam grinned and attacked the keyboard.

_Bzzzzz_

_I built a dam._

_Bzzz_

_There’s a stream out back and there was a place where the water was all caught up behind some debris. I cleared it out and the pool drained and the water carved all kinds of new pathways, downstream,_

_Bzzzz_

_And it was interesting the way the sudden flood of water did all kinds of unpredictable things, so I built a better dam, upstream_

_Bzzz_

_It was really big. I think the water got to be about two feet deep and I had to move some rocks to make a C shape because the water kept escaping around the sides of the dam_

_Bzzzz_

_And finally I couldn’t keep it together anymore so I just pushed the whole thing over and let the water escape all at once. And I just followed it down the hill to see what it would do._

Dean read the slew of messages with a little grin. He knew exactly the creek Sam was talking about, and he’d built a fair share of dams himself there, over the years. Not recently, though. The last time he’d played in a creek he’d been about twelve.

Sixteen years. How time flies.

 

It seemed very quiet in the car, now. The laptop needed wifi to send messages, and Dean couldn’t read them while he was driving anyway. So the conversation halted and they made do with Bon Jovi’s “Play the Game.”

Sam had brought the laptop with them on the drive, and Dean made a mental note to make sure the place they stopped for lunch had wi-fi.

He liked talking to Sam.

He liked that Sam’s messages were getting longer. Dean didn’t know if it was the ease of typing, or some change happening inside Sam, but the messages were getting more descriptive. Less formal. Less apologetic.

“You know, we should get you an ipad,” Dean remarked after a while. “They connect to the cell network so you can send messages anywhere there’s cell service. And the keyboard’s pretty big, so it’ll be easier to type than with a phone.”

There was a smile on Sam’s face, a real one, not tinged with sadness or cynicism, and suddenly Dean wanted to take his face and kiss him.

In the name of not driving off the side of the road, he resisted.

 

They got to Salina too early to even pretend either of them was hungry, so they ended up in front of the police station before they went anywhere else.

“We don’t have to go to see Victor yet,” Dean said after a minute passed and Sam made no move to get out of the car. “The federal building is right over there. We can go spend a couple riveting hours trying to prove your identity to the government.”

Sam smirked, and reached for the door handle.

He didn’t walk toward the federal building. He walked toward the police station. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets.

Time to face the demons.

 

The interrogation room looked exactly like every interrogation room Dean had ever pictured. The guy sitting at the table, not so much.

Dean had pictured the doctor as a young professional, sleek, calculating, sarcastic. You know. Evil. The kind of person who would stroke his goatee while negotiating the price for mutilating an innocent man.

Doctor Robert looked more like the kind of guy who would misplace his stethoscope and then give you a lollipop to take home even though you’re pushing thirty.

“He wanted me to take the tongue out,” Robert was saying. “The whole tongue. Do you have any idea the kind of recovery time that takes?”

Sam looked like he wanted to deck the man in the face, and then throw up. Dean felt like he shouldn’t be here. He’d assumed that Victor and Sam would do this privately, but Sam had caught his sleeve when he tried to leave. So here he was. Face to face with a monster who acted way too much like somebody’s uncle.

“It takes months to learn to swallow properly, those muscles are all interconnected and they go all the way down the throat. Ideally you’d have to feed the patient with a tube and even then the chances of infection are _massive._ ”

Victor was not impressed.

“Your point?”

“Other than talking Azazel out of that procedure _more than once?_ Stroke of genius on my part, if I do say so. I mean, who wants a sex slave without a tongue? Reduces their usefulness significantly, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“You’re a paragon of altruism,” Victor growled. “Is there a point you’re arriving at?”

The doctor scowled, fixing his gaze on Sam.

“The _point_ is, I’ve had nothing but your very best interests in mind this whole time.”

Sam visibly blanched and the sight made Dean inexplicably angry.

“Yeah, you did great, you didn’t hurt him as bad as you _could_ have. And so this is, what, an apology?”

The doctor fixed Dean with a level stare.

“You have no idea the money Azazel was paying to make this happen. It’s illegal, I know that. But if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have, and Sam was much better off in my hands than in theirs.”

“Tell it to the devil and he’ll put you in a smaller fire,” Dean growled.

“You know, I’m thinking maybe I’ve changed my mind about this whole ‘cooperation’ thing, if that’s how you’re gonna treat me.”

And that’s when Sam crossed the table in one smooth motion, pulling the doctor up by his lapels and slamming him into the far wall. The look on his face indicated that he might have been screaming, if he could, but instead the silence only seemed to frustrate him more and he slammed the man into the wall again.

“Stop it, Sam,” Victor said, but there was no anger in his voice.

Sam’s face was an inch from Robert’s and he was staring into the other man’s eyes, flicking back and forth across his face, looking for something he wasn’t finding.

“Please put me down,” the doctor squeaked, and Sam dropped him, stalking back across the room and kicking the table as he went.

“You can’t cough, can you?” the doctor asked after a second. “I mean, you can, but it’s silent, right?”

Sam shrugged.

“So?” Dean translated.

“So I’m guessing none of you went to medical school and so you don’t know how _wrong_ that is. Through all of this did any of you crack a book to try to figure out what I _did_?”

“You sliced him open and took his voice away, who cares how you did it?”

“Well apparently, no one, which is why I wanted him here for this.”

The doctor made a ‘come here’ gesture toward Sam, who did no such thing.

“Fine. Pout. Do me a favor though. Say ‘check please.’”

Sam glanced at Dean, then did as he was asked. Nothing.

The doctor was looking around at them with a grin, like he’d just proved something very important. When all he got was blank stares he rolled his eyes.

“Say it again. And officer, put your hand on this throat when he does it.”

Sam pulled away so fast he almost knocked the table over.

“Oh my _god_ you slaves are twitchy. Look, it’s an important demonstration that’s going to knock years off my sentence so suck it up and do it.”

Sam looked to Victor, then Dean, then went for the notebook.

(They wouldn’t let him bring the laptop in, or any phones, so it was back to the notebook for Sam. )

“ _Why?”_

“Because it’s the fastest way to prove what it is I’m trying to tell you.”

“ _Can Dean do it?_ ”

The doctor shrugged.

“Sure, whoever, I don’t care.”

Sam met Dean’s eyes, nodded slightly, and then raised his chin, baring his throat. Dean hesitated before reaching out and gingerly laying his hand on the skin there.

“You might have to squeeze a little harder to make it work,” the doc said, and Sam swallowed. Dean glared at Robert.

“What am I supposed to be feeling?”

“Sam, say something. Anything.”

Sam did, and Dean could feel the words in his throat, but of course there was no sound.

“See what I mean?” Robert said excitedly, looking at Dean. Dean dropped his hand.

“You have five seconds to stop being cryptic and then I’m gonna hit you ‘til you’re hoarse.”

“That’s exactly my point! I told Azazel I’d burn out his vocal cords and if I had done that he would be _hoarse._ His voice isn’t muted, it’s _gone._ ”

“And that’s _better?_ ” Dean asked incredulously.

“Yes!” the doctor said, looking over Dean’s shoulder at Sam. “Cluck your tongue. Whistle. Make a ‘t’ sound. Or a ‘k.’ Or an ‘f.’ You can’t.”

Sam was looking like he might need to introduce the good doctor to the wall again, and Dean was thinking maybe he had the right idea.

“So?” Victor asked. “All you’ve done is prove the extent of what you did to him. Congratulations, you’re the scum of the earth, are you done taunting him now?”

“You aren’t paying attention,” the doctor said. “Do you know how to whistle? You blow air past your lips. All there is to it. So explain to me, please, what I did to his _throat_ that interferes with his _lips._ ”

The doctor rounded on Dean.

“When he was talking. You felt it in his throat, right?”

“Yeah? So?”

“ _So,_ humans vocalize by making vibrations in their vocal cords. The vibrations create sound waves. It’s not magic. _So_ , if the vibration is there, then _where is the sound?_ ”

Sam flipped the paper up to face the doctor.

“ _What did you do?”_

“And there’s the million dollar question! I didn’t take your tongue and I didn’t take your vocal cords, so why can’t you talk?”

The doctor was grinning.

“It’s a sigil. That’s all. Simple little silencing sigil incised on the back of your throat. You’re quiet, Azazel’s happy, and best of all, totally reversible in the event that it ever gets back to me. See? Not a monster after all. Told you I was looking out for you.”

Dean looked at Sam. Sam collapsed into the chair.

Robert cackled.

 

To no one’s surprise, Sam was unwilling to let Robert do the reversal. Not that he could have, anyway; Victor was one hundred percent certain that Robert was going to lose his medical license.

After Sam left, Robert sang like a canary, giving up the names of dozens of owners who had come to him for his ‘alteration services.’

Verification of Robert’s story required photography a little beyond Benny’s abilities, which is how Dean ended up in the waiting room of an ENT, waiting patiently while Sam got a camera stuck down his throat.

Sam might have wanted him there for that. He wasn’t sure. Victor had called in a favor with the doc, and Dean had agreed to take Sam over. Then a nurse had come out and called Sam’s name (Sam Wesson, his full name, which caused a number of confused looks from patients who had noticed his barcode) and Sam had gone alone.

Just before the door closed he looked back at Dean, his eyes wide, but then he was gone and Dean was just… waiting.

He was waiting a long time, longer than he thought it should take to snap a couple pictures, and then the nurse was back. Without Sam.

“He’s asking for you,” she said with a shrug.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The office had a white board, and before Dean even showed up, Sam had co-opted it for his own purposes.

“ _TAKE IT OFF.”_

“Mister Wesson, I understand this is frustrating for you-”

Sam almost hurled the marker across the room, but fortunately the nurse returned with Dean just in time to stop the doctor from talking about whatever it was he _did not at all understand._

Dean looked around the room once, trying to gauge the situation, and Sam slapped the white board to get him up to speed.

“Gonna need some more details, there, buddy.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“ _They can break the sigil but they’re saying not for weeks.”_

“We’ll need to put you under anesthesia which means an operating room and they’re booked. We can try to get you in at another office but we’d need to do some blood tests to make sure there wouldn’t be an interaction with the medication.”

“ _So don’t put me out.”_

“Mister Wesson, I don’t think you understand quite how painful this sort of thing can be.”

Sam stared at the doctor for a moment, ice in his eyes, and then he pulled his shirt over his head and turned back to the whiteboard. The marks from the whip were healing well, but Sam knew they were still obvious. They stood out in bright straight lines on his skin, matching the clear block letters on the whiteboard.

“ _I WANT IT GONE.”_

The doctor coughed a little, not sure what to do with this new information. Sam sighed.

“ _I can handle the pain. I just want to talk again.”_

He looked to Dean for support, begging the hunter to back him up. They’d seen his barcode. They knew what it meant. They weren’t going to take his word on anything, no matter what Victor had said. They’d look to Dean to make Sam’s decisions, and Sam knew it. He stared at Dean, willing the other man to meet his eyes.

“Let me see the sigil,” Dean said finally. Sam’s shoulders dropped. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either.

The nurse brought him a print-out of the photo they’d taken. It showed a white, twisted scar wiggling across the surface of pink, wet skin.

“How big is it?”

“About two inches wide. On the back of the throat, just low enough to be hidden. We think it was burned in. The tissue damage to the surrounding area is minimal, and the scar itself is shallow, but clear.”

“It would have to be,” Dean remarked. “If the sigil is altered, it won’t work. In theory, all you’d need to do is nick any of these white lines, and it would break the sigil.”

“It’s not a matter of ease,” the doctor protested. “I can’t just start cutting into people and hope it’ll go fine. For all I know, your slave has hemophilia and he’ll start bleeding out the minute I scratch him.”

“He doesn’t. And he’s not my slave. He’s a free man and he wants his voice back.”

“I respect that, but I can’t do it.”

Dean rubbed his temples.

“Fine. How soon can we come back?”

“You’ll have to talk to the woman at the desk about that. At least a week, though.”

A week. Another week of silence.

Sam swallowed hard, feeling the sore lump the camera had left.

It had been months. He hadn’t spoken in months.

The notepad and the laptop were helping, but they were recent additions. Before that, at Azazel’s, he had had nothing. And he’d handled that, just fine.

He could do another week.

He looked up at the doctor, at Dean and the nurse. He nodded. He tried to smile and failed, miserably.

“ _Can I have a minute?”_

“Sure,” Dean said.

The doctor patted Sam’s arm condescendingly. “Take as long as you need.”

Sam nodded.

They left him alone. The doctor and nurse treated him like a slave, but they must have believed Victor after all, because they left him alone.

Sam’s eyes crossed to the glass jars lining the edge of the countertop. Cotton balls, tongue depressors, empty syringes, q-tips, and, right there at the end, scalpels.

Nobody left slaves alone with weapons. Nobody.

Sam pulled his shirt on over his head, expecting that this was going to end quickly and he might not be able to grab it later.

His hand hesitated when he reached for the scalpel. This was direct disobedience. He was going to get in trouble for this. Maybe a lot.

He didn’t care. He wanted to talk.

He couldn’t do another week.

He stripped the plastic-paper off one of the blades, turning it over in his hands. He didn’t know how much time he had.

He looked up at the ceiling, the same way he had when they’d gone in with the camera. He knew where it had stopped, so he was pretty sure he knew where the sigil was. On the back. Just low enough to be hidden.

He relaxed his body, closed his eyes, felt the back of the blade slide against the back of his tongue. And then he pushed, and a line of fire opened along his throat. He could feel blood dripping down his trachea and it was _weird_ and he tried to swallow, which lit the line of fire up again.

He groaned.

And then he laughed, which hurt but he didn’t care because he could _hear_ it.

He dropped the scalpel into the sink and then spat a mouthful of blood on the stainless steel next to it.

It hurt a _lot._

He laughed again.

It was that easy.

All that time, it was that easy.

He couldn’t stop laughing. He’d forgotten what it sounded like. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, not faking it, not being polite, but because he was happy.

It hurt and he didn’t care because that pain was the feeling of being free.

There was a knock at the door and Sam couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer. He spat into the sink again, then sank to the floor. He had a stitch in his side and he couldn’t breathe.

The door opened and Dean was there, staring at him wide-eyed, and the expression sobered him somewhat. He stopped laughing, and caught his breath.

“Do I have blood on my face?” he asked, and Dean’s shocked expression was enough to set him off again.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: Self-harm in this chapter. 
> 
> It counts. I was all kinds of triggered while I was writing it. I didn't know he was going to do that. 
> 
> I've gotta stop doing short chapters and then apologizing for how short they are. I swear, they seem longer when I'm writing them? I think it's because I'm using a word document with really big text and it's double spaced so I'm looking at it like "whoo I wrote ten pages!" but then when I paste it here I'm like "awww I only have to scroll twice." 
> 
> But then I check the comments and everyone seems happy that I update so frequently, so short and frequent beats long and delayed? I don't know. 
> 
> The other thing is, I think the frequent updates are artificially driving up the hit count. It's [passed six thousand. ](http://imgur.com/LsnDvIK)
> 
> I made that gif, by the way. Because that's exactly the reaction I have every time I check back on this story and realize *how many people* are reading it. I'd post my own picture, but it looks better on Misha. 
> 
> Speaking of my ugly stuff: Congrats Junkerin, you win fanart, which I will post as soon as I figure out how to export it from my ipad. 
> 
> I'm still not sure that this isn't an elaborate practical joke, so I'm not gonna brag about being a good writer yet, but I should warn you: I am not a good artist. My brain never learned to process two visual inputs at once, so I really mean it when I say I have no spacial perception. (Also, those 'magic eye' puzzles never worked for me.) My fanart is like, [My Immortal](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/2/My-Immortal) level bad. I can't wait to show you. 
> 
> A lot of people came close but a lot of you guys had guesses I'd never considered. Well done. Very creative. I liked it for two reasons: 1. because I like things I haven't thought of and 2. it means I'm not being blatantly obvious with my foreshadowing. 
> 
> Those of you familiar with IRL devocalization know that damage to the vocal cords still leaves victims able to whisper and make raspy sounds, so it made no sense for Sam to be utterly voiceless.  
> Those of you paying attention during my tawdry lovemaking scenes will also note that Sam was still doing that fun little moan-to-make-your-throat-vibrate trick (gents love it!) which literally *can't be done* without making sound. I wasn't just taking artistic license with that- it was a real actual clue. 
> 
> Notice anything else that isn't making sense? There's something I've put in twice now that seems like a mistake but isn't. (I am inviting a rain of nitpicking with this, bring it on, my body is ready.)


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: This chapter delves into more details of Sam's training/past sexual history. It's kinda graphic and it might be rape-triggery for some. 
> 
> Who am I kidding, I can hear ya'll getting ladyboners from here. 
> 
> Soundtrack to this chapter is [Cha-Ching](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhSvfxtlUQc) by Imagine Dragons.

To make a long story short, the doctor asked them not to come back. Apparently that’s what happens when you slit your own throat in someone’s office.

Sam giggled again.

Dean was starting to give him weird looks, but he didn’t care.

_So_ many things were funny today.

His throat hurt, a lot actually, but the doc had taken a look at it and determined that the cut was superficial. Sam, to his credit, did not say ‘I told you so’ even though he was now completely capable of doing so.

They sent him away with a couple sample boxes of prescription strength painkillers, which served the dual purpose of lessening the ache in his throat, and making everything funnier.

They’d been planning to go to the social security office but after about five minutes in the car, Dean had decided it was probably best to just take Sam home.

Sam was okay with that. He thought he’d probably be okay going to the social security office, too. Actually, he was up for going just about anywhere.

And he could. He could go wherever he wanted.

The thought came without the mantle of fear that had settled over it in the days since he’d learned of his freedom.

What freedom meant for him, _really_ meant, is uncertainty. He hadn’t had to make a real choice since before his first owners, and those were terrifying, uncertain times. He didn’t remember where he and his father had lived. He knew they moved a lot. He learned not to leave things in his locker, in case he went home from school and his dad moved them before he got the chance to go back.

He spent a lot of time wondering what was going to happen next. Where they were going to sleep. What they were going to eat.

What his dad was going to do.

And then he’d been sold and things became wonderfully, beautifully stable.

Hard, sure. They were training him to fight, and they didn’t waste their time having him pretend-spar with other little boys. He went to bed with his fair share of bruises, but that was nothing new, and at least they always made sure to feed him afterward. And unlike his father, after they hit him, they showed him how to block. When he learned to block, he didn’t get hit. Simple.

He didn’t wonder about his future any more. He learned, he adapted, and he worked toward the goal of pleasing his masters. Always.

He grew up, he grew out, he got strong. After a couple years he was almost as big as his father had been, and nobody landed hits on him. Not any more.

Only problem was, Sam hadn’t grown up into the fighter they’d hoped for. People got killed in the ring. They weren’t supposed to, but they did. And Sam wasn’t willing to kill anyone. To be completely honest, Sam wasn’t really interested in hurting anyone, so while his defense was second to none, his offense left a lot to be desired. That made him a bad bet in the ring, and his owners were unhappy.

Sam started to wonder again. He wanted to be what they wanted, but then he’d be standing there with his fists clenched, willing himself to lay into some opponent and he just… couldn’t.

His future was uncertain again.

That’s when Abaddon had come into his life. She took one look at his fighter’s physique and offered to train him in exchange for a cut of his sale price. She knew her business and swore he’d sell high, and she was right.

He couldn’t have been more than sixteen the first time he met her. He’d been told she was going to train him, and he went in expecting a fight. Instead, she told him to take his clothes off. He had, blushing at first as she looked him over. Then she told him to touch himself, while she watched.

It was fun at first. Abaddon taught him about the human body, hers and those of the slaves she owned. Sam lost his virginity to a pretty little blonde whose name he didn’t know. He learned how to smooth and tease and fondle and massage, rarely ever the same woman twice.

Sometimes Abaddon had him work with men, too, straddling their buttocks and working his fingers deep into the muscle of their backs. They didn’t arouse him like the women did, but he learned all the same. He learned how to make his partners cum using his hands, then his mouth. He learned to please two partners at once.

And then one day Abaddon was waiting for him with a pair of leather cuffs. They hung from the ceiling and held him still while a man took him from behind. A blonde woman sucked him off while it happened, keeping him relaxed.

He thought the woman might be the one from before.

He never saw the man.

That night Sam lay awake, staring at the ceiling of his cell. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The warm burn of the man, _inside_ him. Pushing into him, holding him back with fingers digging into Sam’s hips. Sam had tried to focus on the woman, on what she was doing with her mouth. It was good, but not enough to distract him completely.

The next day, Sam was fucked again, this time on his knees, his arms braced against the headboard. This man was bigger than the first, and he kept telling Sam how well he was doing. He urged Sam to relax, rubbing little circles into his back while tears formed in Sam’s eyes.

Abaddon had reached between Sam’s legs and stroked at his cock, making approving noises when he began to harden. She liked it when he could get hard, and stay that way. She said his masters would like it too.

He didn’t want to learn to respond that way, but he did.

He learned about the things he’d be expected to do, to take, to know. He learned about canes and manacles and blindfolds and gags. He learned to breathe around a face-fucking and he learned to work two cocks at once.

And he learned it perfectly, because in amongst all the confusing, burning pleasure, there was absolute stability. When Sam wasn’t being used, he knew he should be at his master’s side, sitting with his hands on his knees, waiting. Sam knew how to offer, how to display, how to please, how to present. After a few years, he didn’t even need to think about it. He slipped into his life, let it happen, gave up action in favor of reaction.

 

And now it was all gone. Everything was on his shoulders again. Everything was a decision. Decision after decision after decision.

He didn’t understand how people did it.

Sam glanced over at Dean. Dean was playing an imaginary drum solo on the steering wheel. Sam wasn’t fooled. He saw the nervous side-eye Dean was giving him.

Dean would fuck him, if he got the chance. Sam knew that.

And Sam would let him, if it meant not being cast out into the world alone. It wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d done to keep the peace.

The truth was, Sam liked Dean. He liked the calm assurance with which Dean navigated his world. He liked the way Dean sprawled out in his sleep. He liked the way Dean had breakfast cereal for dinner sometimes, because meal schedules weren’t a thing that existed for free men. He liked the way Dean would get distracted in the middle of a task and just go _do something else_ because if the task wasn’t done, Dean had no one to answer to but Dean. He liked that Dean sometimes watched movies upside down with his legs over the back of the couch because Dean had never spent hours in a single position to memorize the feeling of the ache that came from doing so. He liked that Dean picked his own jobs and got in his own car and went wherever he wanted.

Sam knew that following Dean around was cheating, a way of pirating secondhand freedom, but he didn’t care. It was close enough for him.

“Earth to Sam. Earth to Sam. Anyone home?”

Sam snapped out of it.

“What?”

His voice was raspy and harsh, from disuse as much as his recent adventure with the scalpel.

“I wanna get some grub before we get out of town. What do you want?”

“You know I’m alright with whatever you want.”

“Yeah, I know you are. Think about it, though. Do you have a preference?”

Sam thought for a moment, and concluded that he did not. He shook his head.

Dean picked the closest fast food joint and they ate drive-thru in the front seat of the car. Dean got a burger. Sam got a chocolate frosty, and because Dean insisted, French fries.

“Ice cream is not a meal. You need a vegetable.”

“I just want something cold,” Sam explained. His throat still hurt.

“It’s so weird to see you talking,” Dean said after a minute.

“I can be quiet again, if you prefer.”

Dean shook his head.

“Not how I meant it. It’s weird, not bad. Don’t be quiet. I like hearing you talk.”

“Wait till I start singing.”

Dean laughed out loud. Dean laughed with his whole body, and Sam was glad to see him do it.

He mashed a fry into the ice cream, then swallowed it whole.

“I think I thought of something I want to do.”

“Name it. Let’s do it.”

Sam inclined his head toward a neon sign across the street.

“I want to get a tattoo.”

Dean nodded.

“All right. Let’s do it.”

 

 

As it turned out, they wouldn’t do a tattoo without some kind of ID, but the artist was happy to talk about the design he wanted.

Her name was Alex, and she could draw like nobody’s business.

She hesitated when Sam told her he wanted his bar code covered up. Her eyes flicked to Dean, who nodded his approval.

“He’s not mine.”

“Whose is he?”

“Mine,” Sam said. She turned back to him.

“That’s cool. So, any ideas?”

“I want it covered. Totally. And the number, too.”

“It’s pretty big. To have it covered up you’re probably looking at almost a half-sleeve.”

“That’s fine. As long as it doesn’t look like a code.”

She took his arm in her hands, turning it back and forth to see the way the code moved with the skin. Sam let her do it. He was used to being looked at this way- practically. With intent.

“What about trees?” He gestured across the thick lines of the barcode. “Birch trees. Change the lines to be the edges of the trunks, use the white space to add knots and cracks in the bark. And then use cross-branches to break up the parallels.”

Alex released his hand.

“It could work. I can do some drawings and get back to you. Do you mind if I take a photo?”

Sam shook his head. Of course he didn’t mind.

He realized no one had ever asked his permission before. Normally they just told him how to stand and where to look.

Alex took the photo.

“Not surprised you want it off. People come in wanting ‘em sometimes. I don’t do them, personally, they usually end up causing too much trouble and the client regrets it. Yours looks good, at least. Who’d you get to do it?”

“I don’t know. My owner had it done when I was sixteen.”

Alex blinked at him.

“You can’t have an owner when you’re sixteen.”

“No one told him.”

Alex looked at him incredulously for a second, then started laughing.

“Dude, that is _fucked!_ That blows, really. Don’t worry. I’ll get you taken care of.”

 

 

 

 

“You can get it removed, you know. You don’t have to cover it up with another tattoo.”

Sam looked up from the laptop. He was talking with Bela about the progress on her first two cases. It was going well. The first owner had put an attaché in charge of the suit, and it was just a matter of agreeing on a number. The second owner was dealing with Bela himself, trying to bully her into dropping it and walking away. Sam remembered him. He liked to have Sam fuck his wife while he hid in the closet and watched.

Bela found this extremely amusing.

“There’s like, lasers or whatever,” Dean carried on. “That’ll just take it off.”

Sam frowned.

“I’d rather cover it. There’s no point erasing it and pretending it was never there. I’d rather change it and make it into something of my own choosing.”

Dean let out a little laugh.

“That’s fuckin’ deep. Did you just think of that?”

Sam shrugged.

“I guess. I just want it to not be a barcode. I don’t like how people look at it. How they see it, and talk to you instead of me.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. I can see how that would get annoying, not having anyone take you seriously.”

“No, it’s not that. As long as it’s there, I’ll have people looking to you to double-check my decisions. It’s too easy. It takes the pressure off me, knowing you can shut me down if you disagree. I have to be able to stand on my own. Even if it’s hard.”

Dean didn’t say anything.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t put that on you. It’s not your problem.”

“No, it’s just, I’ve never thought of it like that.”

“I know. I admire that about you. The way you just, do whatever you want. You don’t look to anyone to make your choices for you or back you up or validate you. I wish I could be more like that.”

“I used to.”

“What?”

“I used to look to my dad. He taught me everything I know. Half the stuff I learned, I did just to try to impress him. Make him proud, you know? We worked together my whole life, and the whole time I was just trying to convince him that he could depend on me.”

“What happened to him?”

Dean paused for a moment.

“Cancer. He kept getting headaches but we got beat to shit so often he figured it was nothing. Wouldn’t go to the doctor, you know? Then one day he passed out in the middle of breakfast and they did an MRI and hey, brain tumor. He died about two weeks later. Forty nine years old. Just like that.” Dean ran a hand through his hair. “So I guess I know what it’s like to suddenly be stuck with your own decisions.”

“You’re doing very well. From what I’ve seen, you’ve got your life very well managed.”

“I guess. I just kept doing everything that I’d been doing, you know, before. There were things Dad did that I took for granted, but I learned to do them myself. Except it’s more dangerous to do on my own. I can’t be two pairs of eyes, no matter how hard I try. Honestly? I don’t know what I’m gonna do when you leave.”

Sam looked at the floor. He’d been trying not to mention it.

“I don’t know either.”

“Well yeah, no, I know. But dude, you’re friggin’ _smart,_ the way you figured out that thing with the spellbook, and then the way you learned all that legal shit Bela was talking about? Nah, man, leave hunting to the dumb dropouts like me. You can do whatever you want. Especially once the money from your owners comes in. You’re gonna be great, man.”

Sam’s heart was beating fast. Dean didn’t think he should stay. Dean wanted him to go do something else. And he said it so casually, like he didn’t realize that Sam could barely even get through a single day on his own. He wore the clothes that Dean had picked out for him and sat on the couch in the place that Dean had gestured to and he went the places Dean took him.

“Can you teach me to drive?” he asked suddenly. Dean nodded.

“Yeah, sure. Once you’re off the painkillers, yeah? No offense, but I don’t let just anybody drive my baby.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, no big deal.”

And Sam wanted to protest and say that it _was_ a big deal, and that _everything_ Dean had done for him was a big deal. He wanted to tell Dean how much he had done and what it meant to Sam, but the words weren’t there. Sam was used to expressing gratitude with body language Dean didn’t understand. Well, that and sex. Dean understood sex, obviously. So, sex it was. Sam set the laptop aside, steeling his resolve, and that’s when there was a knock on the door.

They both turned as one, staring at the wood-paneled door.

“You expecting company?” Sam asked.

Dean shook his head, and discreetly slipped a knife into the waistband of his jeans before crossing the room to answer. In his line of work, you couldn’t be too careful.

It was a delivery man.

“Dean Winchester?”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta sign for this.”

“What is it?”

The man gave him a look.

“It’s a big heavy friggin box. You’re not expecting a delivery?”

“Nope. Though I sometimes order stuff online and forget. How big and heavy are we talking?”

“Sign the slip and I’ll show you.”

Dean signed the pad. Sam peered over his shoulder. The delivery man turned and waved to someone in the back of the truck, and they began dragging a large wooden crate off the back of the truck. It was marked ‘fragile’ and ‘express’ and was easily four feet to a side.

“What the fuck?” Dean muttered. “I definitely did not forget ordering anything like that.”

“You signed for it, it’s yours now,” the man said, shrugging.

“Do you have a crowbar?” Sam asked, and Dean nodded and went to fetch it.

The truck was gone by the time they worked the metal bar into the loose-nailed seam of the lid. Dean hauled down on the bar, and the lid rose easily, the nails screaming. Sam pushed it the rest of the way off, and sunlight streamed into the box.

“Oh, _really?”_ Dean groaned. “He couldn’t have called?”

Sam stared into the box, eyes wide, voice once again frozen. From underneath shaggy hair streaked with gray, his father stared back at him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-length-rivaling-author's-note: 
> 
> I should mention that my chapter tracks aren't meant to set the tone for the chapter and the lyrics don't have anything to do with what happens.   
> Ever hear a song you listened to a lot when you were younger, and suddenly start remembering things you were feeling/doing when you heard it? Music is an incredibly effective mnemonic device, and for me, it's a great way to move back and forth between mindsets. I'll be working on a chapter and hear a song I like and then just start playing it on repeat until the mindset for the chapter/story is associated with that music. It allows me to switch between tasks and stories by switching the music. It's not perfect (Vanilla and Vodka definitely seeped into this chapter, sorry) but it helps. 
> 
> I actually found three drawings which I am willing to show you. The first one is a crappy representation of a super-dramatic scene from one of NorthernSparrow's stories.   
> The second one is half a drawing of an idea I had for Castiel fighting his way through Hell. It's not so much 'in progress' as 'abandoned forever.' I decided to stick with writing.   
> The third one is a sketch I made based on the scene where Sam gets tied to a chair in "Angel Heart." Something about that shot gave me the happy-shivers, so I drew it. Badly.   
> [Here it is, as promised.](http://imgur.com/a/aQHIR)
> 
>  
> 
> I'm gonna try to get another chapter posted today (yes, today!) but my friend just texted me and wants me to drive to New Hampshire with her, so I might be busy.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [Polaroid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrAHef3elGY) by Imagine Dragons. The video in the link is pretty good, too. The editing is good and I think it could have been great if they had had better source video. But, such is the nature of fanworks, yes?  
> Fun fact: when I was in high school I wanted to make videos like this for a living, but I accidentally went to a school that focused on filming rather than editing. Had to switch majors in the 11th hour, oops. Sam and I have that in common.

“You _bastard,”_ Sam growled. He hauled his father up by the front of his shirt, throwing them both off balance when the chains caught and kept him down. Sam dropped the older man, who crumpled back into the box without protest.

Transport bindings, of course. Azazel was a big fan.

“Put the fucking lid back on, he’s not staying.”

“Uh, I get where you’re coming from, but the truck’s gone and this box isn’t gonna fit in my car.”

“Then we’ll roll it into the _fucking river,_ ” Sam snapped. He was very angry, and it was very sudden, and a detached part of his mind wondered where it was coming from. It’s not like he’d spent the last thirteen years planning revenge. He barely thought about his father at all, really.

But now that he was here, Sam realized he hated him.

“Don’t be like that, Sammy. Unchain me, we can talk about this.”

Sammy. That’s right. His father used to call him Sammy.

Sam saw red. His body was frozen with some awful internal pressure which was going to absolutely tear him apart. He couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t talk to me. You don’t get to talk to me. Ever.”

Sam stalked back into the house before he did something he would regret.  

 

 

The problem they had, was that John’s paperwork was totally valid. And Dean had bought his title at market for one hundred fifty dollars. Azazel had recognized that purchase and forwarded John along to him, just like he’d promised to do in the police station in Salina.

In short, John legally belonged to Dean, and there was nothing to be done about it.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean said, once he got off the phone with Azazel’s secretary. “I didn’t ask for him. They just sent him.”

“So get _rid_ of him.” Sam’s hands tightened on the edge of the kitchen table.

He didn’t know where he was supposed to be. What he was supposed to be doing. His father was in a wooden crate in the front yard, and while a logical part of his mind knew they couldn’t just _leave_ him there, another small but loud part was terrified at the thought of bringing him in. There was no way to know what would set John off, make him angry, make him violent-

Sam shook his head. He wasn’t a little kid any more, cowering in the corner and praying he could keep away from his father’s attention. He was a grown man, as big as John had ever been, and stronger, to boot. There was no rational reason for him to be afraid of the older man and yet somehow, his heart raced at the thought of John coming into the house Sam now thought of as home.  

He hadn’t realized until just this moment.

“Sam. Calm down.”

Dean’s hands were on his shoulders, grounding him, bringing him back into the moment. He looked up into Dean’s green eyes, taking in every fleck of brown and gold and letting them be his focus.

“Okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Breathe. You’re gonna get past this. He’s not staying. Okay? He’s not staying. But I need some time to figure out what to do with him. And I have to bring him inside while I do that.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Listen. I’ve gotta put him somewhere. I’m guessing you don’t want him in the living room?”

Sam shook his head.

“Okay. So, move your stuff into our room. We’ll share for now and we’ll keep him shut up in the guest room. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Dean released him, slowly, like he thought Sam might lose his balance and fall. Sam didn’t fall. He wasn’t going to fall. He was upset, but he wasn’t some victorian lady waiting to swoon.

Most of his stuff was still in the duffel bag he’d used to carry it inside. It didn’t take long to move his clothes into Dean’s room. He put them in the corner, folded and stacked to take up as little room as possible. He didn’t want to impose. Dean expected him to leave, didn’t want him around if he wouldn’t be a hunter. The least he could do was be unobtrusive.

He did a once-over of the guest room, ensuring that he hadn’t left anything, and then he went outside to face his father.

Dean had found the key to the chains in the manila envelope containing the shipping documents, and now John was sitting on the edge of the crate while Dean unlocked him.

“Lookit you, kid!” John said when he looked up. “You got tall! I told ‘em you’d grow up big, just like your dad.”

“You were right,” Sam said woodenly. His father’s face was lined and worn, but the resemblance was there, plain as day. Sam didn’t want to look at him.

“So what’s the plan? How are we going to fix this?”

“Haven’t figured it out yet,” Dean muttered.

“Well you’ve got the title, right? That’s what the other guy said.” John wrinkled his nose. “He was a bit weird, right? Bet you’re glad to be out from under him, eh Sam?”

Sam clenched his teeth.

“Tomorrow. We’re going to Salina _tomorrow,_ ” he muttered.

“Right. So we’ll go into town, do the switch, and you can carry on the way you planned.”

“Sorry, what?” Dean asked. “What switch?”

“The paperwork thing,” John explained. “Couldn’t do it before, he was too young, so sorry about the bait and switch with the paperwork there. The guys I was working with _swore_ no one would ever notice. But Sam’s eighteen now, so he’s legally able to take my place. We just need to get it registered and then he’s yours.”

“Why,” Sam started, “would I _ever-?”_

“Because free men aren’t allowed in the ring, of course. You’re doing well, right? I told them you would. And some of the guys I’ve seen come out of there. Wow. Fucking mess. But you’re doing great, right?” John looked back to Dean. “Did he tell you he started training when he was eleven? And it all paid off, look at him, not even a scratch. That’s my boy.”

“I’ve never been in the ring.”

John blinked at him.

“What do you mean? They said they were going to train you to be a fighter.”

“They did. But then they changed their minds and had me trained as a pleasure slave.”

John’s expression flickered for just a second.

“Oh. Well, that explains the…” he gestured vaguely at his own mouth. Sam assumed he was talking about the tongue stud. Then he grinned. “So that’s what you’ve been doing since I left? Tending to trophy wives and heiresses and widowers?” He waggled his eyebrows. “That’s my boy.” He turned to Dean. “So he’s what, a present for your wife?”

Sam’s anger was gone, replaced with a hollow sort of emptiness. Sam’s voice was almost impassive.

“Most of my masters have been men.”

There was a warm sort of satisfaction in Sam’s stomach as he watched the blood drain out of his father’s face. John looked back at Dean.

“You-”

“Not married,” Dean remarked, raising his bare left hand and wiggling his fingers. He gave John a wide grin.

“How _dare_ you!” John shouted at him.

“How dare he?” Sam said incredulously. “Of course they _dare,_ they _own_ me. That’s what I’m _for._ Did you think you were dropping me off at summer camp and they’d keep me there? Did you think you’d get a permission slip to sign? You handed me over and _left_ me. And never once in thirteen years did you think about where I might be.”

“I thought about you constantly. But I thought it would be better for you-”

Sam wanted to hit him, but Dean beat him to it. The blow knocked John off the crate, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“You thought it would be better for _you_ ,” Sam hissed. “ _You_ should have been the one in chains. Not me.”

“And what if I was?” John’s lip was split and there was blood on his teeth. “What if I had been the one sold? What happens to you then? You end up in some state-run foster home-”

“And they’d what? Beat me? Molest me? Or maybe I’d just get passed around from place to place and never settle in with a real family. Yeah, John, that would have been a _terrible_ way for me to grow up.”

“That wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” John said quietly. “They said they’d teach you to fight and look after you.”

“Well, they didn’t.”

John had nothing to say to that. Dean hauled him up by the shoulder and frog-marched him into the house. Sam watched them go.

He stared at the front door for a while, trying to decide what to do. Dean might need something. But he didn’t want to be around his father.

What he really wanted to do, was go build a dam.

It wasn’t in any way a practical use of his time. It was basically just playing. Sam knew that, but he’d enjoyed it the last time and fuck it, he wanted to do it again.

So that’s what he did.    

 

 

 

“There’s four dollars in the bathroom.”

It took him a while to say. It bounced around in his head a long time.

_Just tell him. Admit it._

Dean rolled over in the dark, looking at him.

“What?”

“In the medicine cabinet. The bottom of the box of band aids. Four dollars and fifty-two cents.”  
“Okay… what? I’m sorry, this isn’t making sense to me.”

“The day you bought me. You gave me money for food, and you never asked me for change. I hid it, thinking if I ever needed to get away from you, it might help.” Sam paused. “I wasn’t sure I could handle another owner like Azazel. I thought I might have to run. So I hid it.”

“God, that seems like ages ago. How do you even remember that that happened?”

“Because for several hours it was the most important thing in my life.”

“Oh.”

“Dean…”

Sam reached out in the darkness, trailing his fingertips over Dean’s ribs, over his side, letting them rest on his hip.

“You can’t understand how small my world was. How focused. It was utterly limited to the things my master asked of me. John said he thought about me. He’s lying, but I didn’t think about him, either. I didn’t think of revenge or escape or the future or what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t think about what to wear, or what to eat, or what to say, or where to go. I waited for orders and then I followed them.”

He leaned forward, pressing his lips to Dean’s. His hand tightened on Dean’s hip.

“You think I’m smart, but I’m not. I can’t make basic, stupid decisions for myself and I don’t want to leave.” He kissed Dean again, deeper, his hand sliding under the waistband of Dean’s pajamas. “Please don’t make me go. I can be so good for you.” He pressed his mouth to Dean’s and Dean caught his wrist, pulling away.

“Don’t. You don’t have to fuck me to stay.”

“I want to. You’ve been good to me. Let me.”

Sam pressed his body up against the length of Dean’s, rolling his hips against the other man.

“Sam. Stop.”

He had never had this much trouble getting someone to fuck him. The occasional guest had been hesitant to take a slave, but once Sam assured them that he wanted to, they’d gone along with it immediately. And Dean wanted him, that much was obvious several times over.

Sam didn’t know what he was doing wrong.

“Let me. It’s what I’m good for,” Sam murmured.

“Then let me touch you back,” Dean countered. Sam paused.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Is that what _you_ want?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“Why?”

Dean paused.

“Because sex isn’t payment. Nothing I’ve done means that you owe me an orgasm.”

Sam’s face turned dark.

“I owe you something, and I don’t have anything else to give.”  

“What’s your middle name?”

Sam blinked.

“What?”

“Your middle name. Or are you one of those freaks that only has one?”

“It’s Frederick.”

“Sam Frederick Wesson.”

“Samuel.”

“Also known as Sammy.”

“No.”

“We’ll see. What’s your favorite color?”

“I don’t…. green? I guess.”

“Mine’s blue. Dark blue, like the sky gets in summer when the sun never really goes all the way down. Sweet or salty?”

“Salty. Why are you asking me this?”

Dean released Sam’s wrist, letting it settle back across his waist.

“You think you owe me something? I want to know about you.”

“What good is that?”

Dean leaned in and kissed him softly. Sam tried to deepen it and Dean pulled away.

“Don’t think you have to. I don’t want you doing anything to me, unless you’d want me to do it back to you. I don’t think I can explain it to you, but it’s disturbing to me. Call it a free man thing.”

Sam frowned. He didn’t want Dean touching him sexually. He didn’t even touch _himself_ that way. His owners had always wanted him hard, wanted him to ‘enjoy’ it. He could do it, of course. It was all part of the performance. But it was a lie.

He didn’t want to lie to Dean. And it was pretty clear that Dean didn’t want to be lied to.

“I might never want that,” Sam said. That would be the end of it, Dean would realize there was no point in waiting and use Sam like Sam was meant to be used.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

Sam’s breath caught.

“Then what good am I to you?”

“Would you rather be hot or cold?”

“Hot.”

“Why?”

“Slave quarters are usually underground and it’s cold. Being hot would be a nice change of pace. Why do you care?”

“Because I care about you.”

“Why? There’s nothing _to_ me, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. All I’ve got going for me is my training, and you won’t even take advantage of that.”

“There’s more than that, and I’m going to prove it to you. Apples or oranges?”

“Oranges.”

“Why?”

“They give me something to do with my hands.”

“You like working with your hands?”

Sam had to think about it. It had been a long time.

“I guess?” It did seem like an appealing concept now that he thought about it. “Yeah. I think I do.”

“Good. Have you ever been to the beach?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Sour or bitter?”

“Neither.”

“That’s cheating.”

 

Dean had a seemingly endless supply of trivial questions, and he asked them as fast as Sam could answer. They both slowed down as it got late, then early. Sam found it harder to find the answers to the questions. Dean waited longer before asking, and his voice was slowing down.

Sam wasn’t sure which of them fell asleep first.  

 

 

 

 

John must have gotten tired of waiting for someone to let him out of his room, because when Sam woke up, he was standing in the doorway. Dean was still sleeping, his back pressed against Sam’s chest, their fingers intertwined over the sheet. John was regarding them silently, his expression dark.    

“And here I was, feeling bad about the things they did to you, and it turns out you’ve got no problem with it after all.”

John was gone before Sam could come up with a response.

He was glad Dean hadn’t heard.

He drew away from the other man without waking him, and went out into the hall. His father was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief. Sam went into the bathroom, locking the door and stripping off his clothes. He turned the shower handle to H and waited. His reflection caught his eye in the mirror.

He hadn’t been with Dean long, but he was already losing that sharp, starved look he’d picked up while living with Azazel. His body was strong, lithe, and he supposed he must be attractive. He wasn’t sure how to judge. He’d never really looked at people that way. He leaned in, meeting his own eyes in the glass. His hair fell across them and he remembered that Dean wanted him to cut his hair. He didn’t want to. He liked it long. Maybe that’s what being attractive meant? He supposed he wouldn’t look particularly different with his hair short.

He pulled back, looking himself over. The hair on his body was growing back in. Some of his previous owners had liked it, others had wanted it removed. He didn’t know which one he preferred. He’d probably just let it grow.

He idly thumbed the scar above his belly button where there had once been a silver ring. He dropped his gaze to his cock, still half-hard. He wasn’t sure how much could be attributed to morning wood, and how much was caused by Dean’s body, pressed warm and solid against him.

The memory made him harden again, so that probably answered that question.

The water ran hot and the mirror started to fog up. Sam stepped into the water, closing his eyes and letting the tension drain out of his body.

He wasn’t used to thinking of his body on his own terms. What he wanted it to look like. What he wanted to do with it. He knew there were parts of him which were more important than others, parts which garnered special attention. Parts like his tongue and nipples and cock, which were often adorned in some manner or another to draw attention.

He wondered which parts Dean liked.

It seemed odd to him that Dean would want to touch him. Pleasuring was a slave’s responsibility. It’s not that Sam’s masters had never touched him, they had. But the fondles and caresses and teasing had always been for their own pleasure, not Sam’s. They liked him to be hard, but they didn’t particularly care whether he got off.

Dean wanted him to get off, which Sam could do. But he wanted Sam to _want_ it, and that, Sam didn’t think he could do.

He shook his head.

Dean was complicated.

 

 

 

When Sam got out of the shower, Dean and John were shouting at each other in the kitchen.

“It’s none of your god damn business!”

“Of course it’s my business, he’s my son!”

“I don’t understand how you can say that with a straight face.”

Sam stepped into the main room, staying close to the doorway. He didn’t like the idea of planning a retreat, but that’s exactly what he was doing.

“You can’t think he wants that. Not my son. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve tricked him.”

“I haven’t done anything, and you don’t know anything about what he wants. You just met him yesterday.”

“I _raised_ him!”

“You didn’t,” Sam interjected. John was momentarily speechless. “A lot of people brought me up, but you weren’t one of them.”

“Is that where I went wrong? Turning you over to a couple of queers who raised you to think you were… _this?_ ” John gestured around him, looking at Dean. Sam laughed.

“No. You went wrong a long time before that.”

John’s face hardened.

“I may have fucked up a lot of stuff, boy, but at least I can say I never fucked you.”

Dean gaped. Sam shrugged.

“I’d be nicer to him. He owns you.”

And with that, he headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.  

 

 

 

“He’s yours.”

“What?”

Dean didn’t meet his eyes.

“He’s yours. I bought him, I hold his title, but I have no right to him. He’s yours. So I’m giving him to you.”

Sam paused.

“I don’t want him. What am I going to do with him?”

“I don’t know. But you should figure it out, because he’s yours.”

“How do I get rid of him? Slaves can’t be freed, even I know that. So what do I do?”

“You can relinquish him.”

“Good. I’ll do it.”

“He’ll probably end up in a work camp.”

Sam sighed, rubbing his eyes.

“I cannot explain to you how little I care.”

“He might die. The conditions in those places aren’t great.”

“And wasn’t that where I was headed, when you found me? While he was off living his life with my name? He didn’t care about me, why should I care about him?”

Dean looked at him for a long moment.

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

Sam nodded.

“I’m sure.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was actually really hard to write. I have kind of an idea of the mindset I want to get across, but I'll be damned if I could figure out how to do it. In any case, I hope Sam's weird body hangups make more sense now. 
> 
> Also John and his gay panic can fuck right the hell off. Christ, what a douchecanoe. He's actually _hard to write,_ I hate him so much. 
> 
> I had to take breaks from John and go write the.... sigh.... *third* installment of the "Dean gets raped in a bar" story line. The problem I'm having with that, is that Husband is binge-watching The 100. So I'm all worked up and he's like "no we can't have sex I have too many feelings."  
> So basically I'm trying to write this stuff through a constant haze of sexual frustration, which is probably why Sam spent three paragraphs staring at his dick.  
> My marriage is weird. 
> 
> Next chapter might be delayed because I *think* I know what to do with it, but I'm not quite sure how to get there? So I've gotta figure it out. 
> 
> Also delaying me: my mom's getting married this weekend so I'm traveling out of state. Might write from the airport? Who knows. 
> 
> I feel like it's gonna go badly. Like she's gonna be like "what's new, Hazel?" and I'm gonna be like "....nnnooooothing." And she's not gonna buy it. Maybe I can just avoid talking the whole time I'm there? I'm gonna blurt something out, I know it. Or she's just gonna look at my face and know immediately that I have strayed from Christ's teachings.


	20. Chapter 20

In the following weeks, Sam learned the many reasons for celebratory pie.

He got a social security card and a photo ID and a bank account, and those meant cherry pie, sweet and flaky. They bought slices from a bakery and ate them with plastic forks, sitting on the curb and watching people pass.

Bela reached a settlement with the first client and Dean, after seeing the brand-new balance of Sam’s brand-new account, declared that the occasion called for pecan. This they ate at a diner that Dean detoured twenty minutes to get to. The silverware didn’t match and the place was full of children, but the pie was delicious.

The process of relinquishing John went off without a hitch (much of a hitch. He did spend the drive into town sitting in the backseat and lamenting the state of America’s ungrateful youth. Sam, to his credit, did not hit him.) Sam signed the paperwork and didn’t respond when John said goodbye. Sam asked what kind of pie that called for, and Dean just looked at him silently.

Sam and Alex worked out a design for the tattoo, a forest of birch trunks that wrapped around his forearm. Branches and twigs broke up the parallel design, reaching from his wrist to his elbow. Dean sat with them while Alex worked, talking with her about classic music and funny client stories. Alex wrapped Sam’s arm in black plastic and told him not to touch it for at least six hours. Afterward, they got peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream from a place off the side of route 281.

Garth messaged Dean about a wendigo in Nebraska, and the two of them spent a long weekend holed up in an extremely remote log cabin. There was nothing to do but wait for the thing to take the bait, and they passed the time sitting on the rickety porch furniture and playing twenty questions until it showed up and Sam blasted it. Dead wendigo meant lemon meringue, which they got from a diner boasting ‘mile high’ pies. Sam liked that Dean had a mental roadmap of these sorts of places.

Victor called and said that Azazel had an official court date. Robert’s testimony had implicated two other doctors, and one of them linked the murdered slave to Azazel. Three more owners were being investigated in relation to statements from the doctors. Victor said there might be enough to qualify as a ring, and he was working with other departments out of state to see if there were any cases that might be related. Sam asked what kind of pie that called for. Dean said he thought maybe Sam didn’t understand the point of pie.

 

In between all of it, Sam somehow never got around to moving his things back into the guest room. It’s not that he didn’t mean to. It just never really seemed to matter. He found that he liked being close to Dean, and Dean seemed to return the sentiment. It was the little things, like how their feet touched under the table, or the way they always ended up sitting on the same side of the couch. They’d pass in the hall and brush hands, not stopping, just reaching out and knowing the other was reaching too. It became normal, expected. Sam got used to the feeling of Dean’s hands on him. Not like before, with the others. Dean wasn’t groping or fondling him, just reaching out, like he wanted to make sure Sam was still there. The touches were soft, lingering, but not asking for more.

And through it all, he kept asking questions.

It was at night, usually, when they’d settled into bed together. That’s when he started. At first Sam tried to deflect him, to tell him it wasn’t worth knowing the answers, but Dean was insistent.

Sometimes Sam didn’t understand the question (Kirk or Picard?) and Dean would get very excited and start making plans to introduce Sam to the things Dean loved.

Other times Sam understood, but didn’t know the answer (What’s your favorite book?) and Dean would get quiet and that would be the end of questions for the night. Sam tried to always have an answer, but sometimes even his answers seemed to make Dean upset. (Dean asked Sam for his greatest childhood accomplishment, Sam told him about the time he’d managed to pin a training partner even though the man had broken his arm.) Dean would stick to yes/no’s, after that.  

But every night (and sometimes on long car rides, when Sam went along on Dean’s cases) he’d start up again. Sam wondered if he thought all the questions up himself, or if he was getting them off the internet.

They watched a lot of movies, making up for a ‘lifetime of pop culture deprivation’ as Dean termed it. Sam liked most of them. Some of them he didn’t understand. But he watched them anyway, because while he watched them, Dean watched him. Sam’s reactions seemed to mean a lot to the older man, and that made something warm and soft and unfamiliar settle into Sam’s chest.

 

 

“I want to kiss you.”

“Awesome. Do it.”

Dean leaned in, making a ridiculous puckered-up face. Sam shook his head, laughing.

“Shut up. I’m serious.”

“So’m I.” Dean pushed himself up onto one elbow, looking across the bed at him. Morning sunlight trickled in from outside, bathing the room in a golden glow.

“This is… different. From before.” Sam hesitated, not sure how Dean would react. “Before, I had a reason. Like I was trying to calm you down, or turn you on, or just… do what I was supposed to. But this is different. I just… want to. For no reason.” He looked up at Dean. “Does that make sense?”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be, Sam. All the way through, that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“This isn’t going anywhere,” Sam warned when Dean leaned in.

“It doesn’t need to.”

Dean’s voice was soft, honest. He meant it.

Sam reached up, laying his hand against the side of Dean’s face. He let his fingers map the contours of his cheek, his forehead, his hair, his ear, his jawline, his mouth. And Dean let him, not pushing for more, not touching back, just, letting him.

“Can you… would you take your shirt off?”

He though Dean might make some stupid joke, play it off like a stripper, and that would have shattered the whole thing. Sam would have punched him in the shoulder and called him an idiot and they would have gotten up and had breakfast.

But Dean didn’t do that. He sat up slowly, pulling his shirt over his head and laying back down without a word.

Sam had never picked his partners. Whether they were attractive or not did not matter, and so he had never paid attention. He looked at himself and simply saw himself, though he knew objectively that other people desired him.

But when he looked at Dean, he knew there was something there that he liked. Something that he _wanted,_ even if he wasn’t sure exactly what that want _was._

Sam knelt at Dean’s side, not straddling him, that was too close to what he’d done before. He paused before reaching out, then steeled himself and let his hands settle on Dean’s chest.

He’d touched a lot of people in his life. Men and women. Always for them. The focus had always been on whether his hands felt good to them. Now, Sam let himself focus on how Dean felt to him.

His skin was warm, and the hair on his body was wiry and rough. Sam traced his chest, his belly, his arms, feeling the familiar textures of muscle and bone and tendons and fat. He took his time, mapping the man out inch by inch. All the things that made up Dean’s body, and in there somewhere, the thing that made the _want._

He took Dean’s hand in his own, drawing his fingers across Dean’s wrist and palm. He stroked up each finger, watching the way the muscles and tendons flexed all the way to Dean’s elbow. His arms were covered in light scars, a lifetime of fighting and fixing and spellwork. Each of those scars had a story, one tiny fragment of the things that made up _Dean_ and suddenly Sam wanted to know all of them.

“What’s your middle name?”

“James,” Dean answered softly, and Sam leaned down and kissed him. Dean opened for him, but Sam didn’t deepen it any further than that. He just lost himself in the feel and taste and texture of Dean’s mouth, and there was nothing more than that in the world.

 

Sam didn’t want to go farther than that, and Dean didn’t ask him to. When they finally roused out of bed, Dean went to take an extra-long shower, and Sam didn’t begrudge him that.  

 

“Your phone rang,” Sam said when Dean came out. “It’s Victor.”

“You can answer it, you know.”

Sam shook his head.

“It’s not mine.”

“We’ll have to get you one, then. Now that you’re all loud again.”

“Who would I call?”

“Victor, apparently.” Dean picked up his phone, checking the missed calls. Victor had called half a dozen times in the last half an hour. He punched the redial.

“What’s the emergency?”

“Oh thank God.” Victor’s voice came over the speaker filled with static. “What do you know about wards?”

“Lots, why?”

“Because we’ve got something weird out here. Can you come? We’ll get you a consulting fee.”

“For you?” Dean asked with a grin. “Always.”

 

Victor gave him an address and Dean marked it down on a scrap of note paper. He plugged it into google maps while Sam went to grab the go-bags. It was a cabin on the shores of Milford Lake, which the map had tagged as some sort of resort. Dean looked over the map, plotting a route across the state.

Sam came out of the bedroom with the pair of duffels slung over his shoulder.

“You ready?”

“Yeah. You want to drive?”

“Aren’t we in a hurry?”

“It’s a straight shot down 181 to Cawker city. Then you turn left. I think you can handle it.”

Sam smirked.

“Yeah, all right.”

 

The other upshot to Sam driving, was that Dean could call Victor back.

“We’re on our way. What are we walking into?”

“Remember the other owners we were looking into? They all have a connection to this resort. Them, the doctors, and a half-dozen other shady individuals. We finally got the authorization to search it, and when we show up- I’m not gonna lie. I’ve never seen anything like this, and that’s just the parts we can get to. A couple of the doors are warded, and we’ve got no idea what might be behind them. I’m hoping you can get through.”

“I can’t promise anything, but I can certainly try. I’ve made my way through a couple warded passages in my life.”

“Well if you can’t, I’m not sure who to call. We’ve got a low-level witch on the force, and she’s got nothing.”

“You’ve got a witch? Can I talk to her?”

Victor said something to someone that came out muffled, and then a woman’s voice was coming over the phone.

“This is Charlie.”

“Hi Charlie, this is Dean. I hear you’ve got some wards?”

“Yeah. Weird stuff. I’m pretty good with celtic warding and runes, but this stuff is all interlocking circles. Nothing I’ve got will touch it.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen circles. Can you send me pictures? I’ll get you a list of stuff I’ll need.”

 

They had to stop off in Junction City to pick up a couple ingredients, but Dean was pretty sure he could get through the warding. They pulled up the pristine driveway to the manor a little before dark, passing a line of police cruisers on their way in. The manor was lit up bright from the inside, and the whole place was filled with spotlights and numbered evidence markers. Victor was waiting for them by the front door.

“Follow me, and don’t touch anything.”

Dean saluted.

“Yessir.”

“What did you find here?” Sam asked, looking around at the baroque décor.

“Slaves,” Victor said grimly. Sam decided he didn’t need to enquire further. He knew Azazel had friends, and he knew the kinds of gatherings they liked to have. If this place was run by people like him, then Sam could imagine the things that happened here.

The main room was mostly circular, with staircases on either side circling up toward a balcony. The warded door was between these two staircases, and warded well enough that Dean had to focus just to be able to see it. It was covered in intricate wood inlays, circular, just like Charlie had said. Dean tried to analyze them and found his eyes simply slipping off. He shook his head.

“Okay, I need a space to work. At least four feet wide. Can you do that?”

“Yep!” came a chipper voice from beside him. Dean looked over to see a petite redheaded woman looking up at him. “You’re standing right in the middle of it.”

She had chalk and string and the two of them made short work of a summoning circle on the floor. Charlie laid out a seven pointed star, while Dean set up the mirrors he’d picked up in Junction city. In front of each mirror he set a candle, lighting it and letting it burn. In the center of the circle he placed a small crystal sphere.

He went back to his bag, pulling out a tapered wax candle and a couple different oils. The oil he smeared along the length of the candle- cinnamon, clove, peppermint, orange. One on each side. He lit the candle and held the end over the sphere, murmuring a blessing as the wax dripped onto the crystal.

Then he blew out the candle and stepped out of the circle.

“Now what?” Victor asked.

“Now, we wait and see if it worked,” Dean answered simply.

They didn’t have long to wait. After a minute, the smell of burning wood began to fill the room, and Dean found that it got easier to look at the door. The interlocking circles were smoking, the wood charring and blurring the sigils.

“You might want a fire extinguisher,” Dean mentioned, and then the door burst into flame.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yay, Sam is making progress toward resolving his intimacy issues, hooray! He probably has a lot of chapters left before he and Dean have any kind of actual sex. 
> 
> 2\. I've written some more porn to tide ya'll over. I counted my tabs and according to them I have twenty-two spnkink_meme requests I want to fill. I'm the god damn fairy godmother of smut. 
> 
> 3\. Have you guys noticed [Castiel's throat?](http://mailissa-blog.tumblr.com/post/140984094711/these-gifs-are-the-reason-nothing-is-getting-done) Jesus fuck, I want to die and come back as his collar button. 
> 
> 4\. Husband takes issue with the note in the last chapter. He has raised important points, prime amongst them being that he is virile and manly. He's not wrong. He splits firewood with an honest to god axe. Dewy meatsuits, etc. He really is one-in-a-million, though. My best friend once described him as 'a unicorn' and she doesn't even watch the show. 
> 
> 5\. Points 3 and 4 might seem to contradict each other, but they don't. I'm totally allowed to fangirl over things that will never, ever happen. Being an angel's shirt button is totally a fantasy Husband is okay with. 
> 
> 6\. What is the Hellfire Club hiding in their basement? What terrible grotesqueries could possibly be behind that door? Well, I think I know. But I'm not sure. I have an idea, but I'm afraid it's a bad one. Like, season-7, people-abandoning-the-fic-in-droves kind of bad. Its definitely going to be important. 
> 
> 7\. If you're willing to weigh in on this issue, the whole next story arc can be summed up by [this picture which I did not make.](http://chinsung.deviantart.com/art/Chained-Castiel-284761984) Is this a good idea? Or nah? Hit me up in the comments or on tumblr. Let me know what you think. Imma go write a bunch of porny one-shots while I debate this. 
> 
> 8\. If you don't want spoilers for god's sake stay out of the comment section. 
> 
> 9\. Sorry that getting rid of John was anticlimactic. That's what Sam wanted to do. Like in many cases of abuse, the fate of the abuser is not nearly as important as the healing of the abused. I don't think we'll see John again. 
> 
> 10\. According to AO3 my hitcount is over 27k. If it hits 30k I'm buying myself a "love yourself first" shirt. I was scared to get one because deep down I'm pretty sure I'm unlovable, but apparently I'm doing something right. You guys are phenomenal. Thank you.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [the version of 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' that they played on The 100 during that one really sad scene. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknLaFJZ4v4)

The door went up in a flash-flame, common for sigil breaking and usually not dangerous unless there’s something flammable nearby. There wasn’t, but one of Victor’s men hit the flame with a powder extinguisher anyway.

Dean stripped off his overshirt, wrapping the flannel around his forearm to protect it. He pushed the smoldering door open, and the smell of burning wood and chemical retardant was replaced with the reek of blood.

“Jesus,” Dean muttered.

“Let me go in,” Charlie told him, slipping past him into the darkness. She had a mag light and a drawn gun, and Dean felt okay letting her go down first.

“Should we-?” Sam started, and Dean nodded.

“There might be some more warding down there and I don’t want Charlie running across it alone.”

“Do you want me to wait up here?”

“If you want,” Dean said, starting down the stairs. “Or come be my bodyguard.”

Lights flickered on, illuminating the staircase. It was narrow, turning slightly, and wood paneled to match the décor upstairs.

“There’s a switch down here,” Charlie called out, and her voice was hollow. Dean turned the corner, and saw why.

The stairs opened into a wide round space, set under the room upstairs. The floor was concrete, etched and stained into an elaborate inlaid pattern, but still just concrete.

The space was filled with cages. The cages were filled with animals. And the animals were dead. Blood spilled out of the wire and metal enclosures, staining the ornately patterned floor.

“That’s a leopard,” Charlie said, looking at a ball of fur huddled in the corner of a nearby cage. The fur didn’t move.

More people were coming down the stairs, standing on the landing and surveying the scene.

“I want this all catalogued,” Victor said from just behind Dean’s shoulder.

“You’ve got some supernatural stuff in here,” Dean told him, not looking away from the carnage. “You’ve got a chupacabra there, and, uh, those three are phoenixes, and that, um…. That dog’s got three heads so that probably falls into the supernatural category, too.”

Victor nodded.

“Go with the photographers and tell them what you know.”

There was no point avoiding the blood. It was everywhere. It lay in an even sheen over the entirety of the floor. Some of the officers went upstairs to retrieve plastic shoe covers, but Dean didn’t bother. His soles were thick. He’d walked through worse.

He stepped out into the maze of cages, and went to work.

 

It went back, and back, and back. Some of the creatures were just monsters, but some were humanoid. Some of them looked like normal people, but their wrists and ankles and throats were wrapped in warded leather or metal cuffs. Some of the sigils Dean recognized. Some he didn’t.

There were harpies and kitsune and a curupira, werewolves and vampires, all of them dead. Dean knew they could heal fast, and that superficial wounds rarely left scars or marks of any kind.

The creatures he saw must have been starved, because the marks he saw on their naked bodies had barely healed at all.

They all showed some sign of it. They’d been whipped, or pierced, or bitten, or tattooed. Dark, bruised handprints stood out on throats, on hips, on thighs, on breasts. Everywhere he looked, there were the marks of cruelty and pain.

Dean wasn’t innocent. He knew that. He’d killed creatures like this before. He’d looked into people’s eyes as they swore they’d change, they’d never kill again, they’d change their ways if he just-

But he’d never done this. Never had. Never would.

He heard Sam come up behind him. He couldn’t meet the taller man’s eyes.

“This is the man who owned you?”

“Yes,” Sam said simply.

“And he did… this? To the people he owned?”

“Sometimes.”

Sam’s voice was empty, and Dean knew that if he looked up, those hazel eyes would be as empty as a mirror.

In a way, he envied Sam’s ability to escape.

He turned away, and a door on the near wall caught his eye. It was unwarded, standing slightly ajar.

“Come on,” Dean said, and pushed it the rest of the way open. The room was red, plastic red, from the smooth linoleum to the leather couches to the vinyl pads on the various machines scattered throughout the room.

Light poured through the doorway into the darkened room, and for a moment, Dean thought he was looking at a painting. Some sick parody of a crucifix.  

The creature on the far wall had been a man, before his throat had been slit. He hung limply from his arms, spread wide and bound to a crossbar. His pale skin was criss-crossed with deep slashes, streaks and drips of blood painting his whole body. The silver bands around his throat and wrists and ankles were caked in it, and the skin beneath was chafed and burned. But that wasn’t what drew their attention.

Emerging from his back were a pair of massive black wings, spread wide and mounted to the wall with spikes, like pins through a massive butterfly.

Even in the darkness, the feathers glinted with blue and red and purple, and looking at them, Dean saw sunsets and fireworks and bonfires and lightning.

It was abhorrent and terrifying and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Get him down,” he whispered, and then lunged forward, taking one of the spikes in both hands and _yanking._

“Get him _down!_ ” he shouted, because the pin wasn’t moving and even in death, the creature couldn’t be left like this. Dean didn’t believe in a god, but he knew blasphemy when he saw it. “Help me. Sam, _help me!_ ”

Sam’s hands wrapped around his and together they wrenched the spike out of the wall.

The wing collapsed, folding in on itself in a thousand intricate places, slumping into the blood pooling onto the floor.

Dean was already past it, hauling at the other spike as hard as he could, but he still needed Sam’s help to pull it free. The wing collapsed onto the floor with the other, and the creature’s shoulders slumped further. Dean’s heart broke looking at it.

He pulled his knife out of its sheath, using it to saw through the ropes binding the thing’s arms.

“I think we should wait for the photographers,” Sam started to say, but Dean didn’t hear the rest of the statement because several things happened at once.

The rope snapped, and the creature lost his connection to the crossbar. He started to fall, and Dean caught him before he did. His head fell back, and Dean found himself staring into a pair of blue eyes. Bright blue eyes. Impossibly, deeply, vibrantly, vivaciously blue eyes.

_He’s alive,_ Dean had time to think, and then the thing had seized onto his arm with a grip like fire. It was white, the creature’s skin was white, he was surrounded by white, and the hand was burning him and the thing was asking. It was asking Dean for life, and Dean said _yes_ and the thing breathed.

“ _Dean!_ ”

It might have been Sam shouting for him, or Victor, or his father. It was far away, it didn’t really matter.

Dean felt himself opening, unfolding like an origami rose, losing focus and simply melting into the warmth and the white and the _light-_

Someone grabbed the collar of his tshirt, yanking him backwards. The creature fell from his arms and crashed to the floor in a jumble of limbs.

“No-!” Dean shouted, lunging for the fallen thing, but Sam’s arms were around him, holding him back.

“Stop it! Dean- _Dean! Stop it!_ ”

“Let me- he’s dying!” Dean screamed, but the white was fading from the corners of his vision and he was folding back into himself again. “He’s- shit… what _is_ he?”

There were other people in the room now. Charlie, and Victor, and a couple others that Dean didn’t recognize. Charlie had her gun drawn and leveled on the winged creature.

“With those wings? Don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said, not taking her eyes off the still form.

“Don’t shoot him, Charlie. He’s not dangerous.”

“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “He just attacked you, while you were trying to help him. You’re lucky I was here.”

Sam still hadn’t let go of him. Dean shrugged out of the taller man’s grasp.

“No, he… he asked. I let him.”

“Yeah, no he didn’t. I was right here, Dean. I saw the whole thing.”

“In my head. I heard him asking.”

“It’s psychic?” Victor said suddenly, backing away from the creature.

“Maybe? I got this kind of feeling like we were... somewhere else? I’m not sure. It was an odd feeling. But he wasn’t trying to hurt me. I know that for sure.”

“Then what’s this?” Sam asked, his fingers light on Dean’s elbow. Dean looked down. Where the creature had grabbed his arm, its fingers had left burn marks. He twisted his arm, wincing, and saw the complete outline of a handprint seared into his flesh.

“What the hell-?”

“Unfortunate but necessary,” a rough voice intoned. Charlie twitched, and almost shot the thing when it moved. The wings shifted, folding in on themselves, and the being pushed himself up. It looked like it was taking all his strength just to look up at the assembled group of officers. His eyes were a burning, defiant blue as he regarded them. “I will _not_ die in this place.”

Dean moved toward the creature again, and Sam held him back.

“What do you need?” Dean asked, at the same time Victor asked “What are you?”

“Let me make the bond again,” the creature responded, looking at Dean.

“No,” Sam hissed, pulling him close.

“Share your toys, Sam,” Dean muttered, trying to pull out of his grip and failing. “Sam, really. It’s okay.”

“He’ll kill you,” Sam protested. Dean shook his head.

“No he won’t.”

The thing’s gaze flicked to Sam.

“He will suffer no lasting damage. You have my word.”

“What’s your word worth?” Victor asked. Blue eyes fixed him with an angry stare.

“Everything.”

“What are you?”

“I’m a seraph.”

“Like, an angel?” Charlie asked. She’d lowered her gun and was now looking a little excited.

“If you like, yes,” the creature replied. It was still looking at Victor.

“See? Totally safe,” Dean concluded, and tried pulling away from Sam again. Sam did not let go.

“That’s not enough to risk your life on,” Sam hissed at him.

“There’s a spell,” the seraph said, tilting his head to the side to expose the thin silver band encircling his throat. “I cannot hurt my captors.”

“You did burn the shit outta my arm,” Dean pointed out. The creature looked back at him.

“You are not my captor,” he said simply.

“Okay, so, how does that help me then?”

The creature paused, looking around.

“Take possession, and the spell yields to you. I will be incapable of doing you harm.”

“So how do I do that?”

The creature paused again. He looked hesitant, and then came to some conclusion in his own mind.

“Mark me, and I’m yours.”

“Mark you how?”

“However you like. It doesn’t seem to matter. Knives or burns, usually. One man bit me. It seemed to work.”

Victor sent a sharp look in Dean’s direction.

“No way I’m biting you, man. Not on the first date.”

The creature groaned, hauling himself up into an almost-sitting position. He offered Dean his forearm.

“Any mark should work. A small cut would be sufficient. I will not fight you.”

“I’ll shoot him if he tries,” Charlie piped up cheerfully.

“No,” Sam said forcefully. “No, you’re not doing it.”

Dean dropped out of his grip, twisting away from Sam’s attempt to recapture him.

“Seriously, Sam, knock it off.”

Sam set his jaw, then turned his attention to the figure on the floor.

“If you hurt him, I will kill you. Myself. Do you understand?”

The creature met his eyes with an unyielding stare.

“I understand, human.”

Dean approached him again, crouching down so they were on the same level.

“I trust you,” Dean said.

“Dean, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Victor started, but Dean raised his knife and made a small mark on the back of the creature’s arm. The silver bands brightened, small blue sparks winding lazily along the surface of the metal.

“The spell has sealed to you,” the creature said. “You are safe. May I remake the bond?”

“Dean, you have no idea if-”

“Yes,” Dean whispered. The creature reached out, fingers trembling, and laid his hand on the burned impression he’d made before. The light returned, searing into Dean’s skin, filling his entire body with tingling warmth. He began to unfold again, his body losing the solid presence he hadn’t even realized he had always been able to feel. He was weightless and formless and warm. He felt something nudging him, keeping him centered. Slowly, he began to slip toward the seraph, leaking into the creature’s body, losing threads and trickles of himself to the angel.

“ _Thank you,”_ he heard, and then his body snapped back into its usual form and he staggered backwards.

“Dean!” Sam called, reaching for him again.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. It just felt weird.”

“Holy shit,” Victor murmured, looking down at the angel. He’d pulled himself into a sitting position, his wings splayed to the side, his legs crossed indian-style. The backs of his hands were resting on his knees, and his head had fallen back against the wall. And he was glowing.

Across his chest and limbs, his skin was knitting itself back together, the blood seeping back into the flesh like a sponge. The silver bands were sparking with power, and his face was contorted in pain, but he was healing. The dark bruises on his throat and hips and arms faded, growing mottled and then disappearing completely.

His face fell forward, his body spasmed, and then he turned his head and spat out a bullet. It hit the ground with a faint _ping_ that drove home exactly how _quietly_ this was all happening.

“Holy _shit,”_ Victor said again, starting at the little blob of metal.

The light faded, starting at his fingers and toes and working its way down his limbs. The last of the light gathered in the hollow of his throat, flickering brightly and finally going out.

The room was utterly silent.

And then it burst into sound. Everyone had questions, half of them directed at Dean, half of them rhetorical.

“Let me see your arm,” Sam demanded, cutting past the others. Dean blinked and shook his head, his focus returning. He rolled up the sleeve of his tshirt.

The handprint was still there. It had been a sore, seared wound, but now the skin had healed over. The mark was nothing but a whitish-pink scar.

“It doesn’t even hurt,” Dean remarked quietly. Sam’s jaw set.

“He said you’d have no damage,” Sam said stiffly.

“I’m not sure this qualifies as damage. It’s just a scar. And anyway, whatever he did saved his life. I’d say that’s worth a couple scars.”

“It’s more than he’s got,” Victor remarked, crouching down to examine the slumped creature. “The blood’s gone, the scars are gone... all but this one.”

He lifted the creature’s arm, showing them the tiny nick Dean had made with his knife. It had healed, but unlike the others, there was still an obvious scar.

“Is he actually an angel?” one of the other officers asked, keeping his distance. Charlie and Dean exchanged looks.

“Maybe? I’ve never run across anything like him. And I’ve never heard of anyone who had a legitimate claim of having found an angel.”

“He could be one of the fey folk,” Charlie speculated. “They’re supposed to have wings, and they’re associated with lights and magic.”

“We’ll ask him when he wakes back up.”

“He’s already-” Dean started, but he was interrupted by a growl. The creature was up, fast, pushing past Victor with no sign of his earlier weakness. The wings spread wide, beating once and taking him over the heads of the gathered spectators, and then they tucked in and he was through the door and gone.

“Wait!” Dean shouted, scrambling out the door after him.

There were footprints in the blood, far apart so he must have been using his wings. Dean rushed across the main room, past the photographers and officers staring at him with wide eyes. He didn’t need to ask which way the creature had gone. They pointed anyway.

The angel had paused at the base of the stairs. His wings were wrapped around his body and he was trembling like it was taking some monumental effort to stay upright.

“Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you,” Dean said, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened here. The people who did this- we’re not with them. We want to make sure they’re punished for it. Will you help us?”

The seraph turned back to him, and what Dean saw in those fiery eyes now was hate.

“You are _all_ the same,” the creature spat. “You are all in this together.”

“That’s not really fair, man. I just saved your life. I trusted you. Trust me.”

Blue sparks flickered under the surface of the silver, and the creature winced. His eyes flicked to the side, and Dean didn’t need to look behind him to know that Sam was there.

“Why’d you stop?” Sam demanded. “It’s a clear shot to the outside.”

The creature scowled at him but didn’t answer.

“Is it the bindings?” Dean asked. “Holding you in?”

“In a way,” the angel answered vaguely.

“We’re trying to help, man. Work with me here.”

The silver flickered again, and again, the creature winced.

“Are the bindings holding you in the basement?”

“No.”

“So why didn’t you leave?”

“You… told me to wait.”

The words came out forced, like the angel was trying not to breathe while he spoke. There was anger in his eyes and Dean suddenly realized what he’d said.

“That’s part of the binding spell. You can’t hurt me, but it also means you have to obey me.”

“Yes.” The tendons in his throat stood out, and his voice sounded like it was being dragged over glass.

“He didn’t mention it and hoped he’d be gone before you found out,” Sam concluded, looking at the angel with distaste. The angel returned his glare.

“Your pet is smarter than he looks.”

“He’s not my pet. He’s my-” Dean paused, glancing back at Sam.

_Friend, just say friend,_ his brain supplied.

_Yeah, he’s my friend, who sleeps in my bed and sometimes wakes me up with blowjobs and sometimes looks at me like I’m the only person he’s ever really seen._

“-friend,” he finished, looking away.

“Clearly,” the creature deadpanned, and Dean glared at him, because he was _so_ not in the mood to take sass from an angel.

“We’re not talking about him. We’re talking about you. Did you see what happened here? Before the slaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the people who did it?”

“Some of them.”

“Could you identify them?”

The seraph nodded. His jaw was clenched so tight Dean wondered that his teeth didn’t crack.

“Good. Then you can go with Victor back to the station and look at some mugshots,” Sam concluded. He looked behind him, to where Victor was standing just out of earshot. The lightshow earlier had him just spooked enough to give the angel a wide berth. The seraph looked over, eyeing the man coldly, then nodded.

“I can do that.”

“Good,” Dean said, backing away from the creature. “That’s all settled then.”

 

“You should mark him,” Sam said the moment Victor got close. “He’ll obey Dean, but there’s nothing protecting you. If you’re going to take him, you should make a possession mark first.”

The look he got from the angel was pure ice.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that,” Victor said uneasily.

“You want his help, right? And he’s clearly not going to cooperate of his own free will. Seems like a pretty clear decision to me.”

“Except that he _has_ free will, and I’m not sure it’s ethically permissible to circumvent that. Even assuming I was _personally_ open to the suggestion, I’m not sure his testimony would hold up in court.”

Sam looked blank for a moment, then shrugged.

“I’m actually surprised at how okay you are with all this,” Dean mused. “Especially considering it hasn’t been that long since you were in his place.”

The creature perked up, looking critically at Sam.

“I was never half as defiant as he is. Even with Azazel. And speaking of Azazel, we still want him in jail, right? And this thing might be the key to making that happen.”

“He’s not a thing, Sam, be nice.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“I know that name,” the creature said slowly. “Azazel. I have met this man. He was…. forceful.”

“Yeah, I know. Been there, done that, got the fucking scars.” Sam pulled his sleeve up, exposing the scarred edge of a whip mark.

The creature reached out, his fingertips just brushing the edge of Sam’s elbow. There was a flash and Sam jerked away with a shout.

“The fuck-?”

“His marks are gone from you. You are freed.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t work that way for humans. Don’t touch me.”

Dean didn’t miss the way Sam rolled his shoulders. He wondered how much the lacerations had been hurting the larger man.

“Are they really gone?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, not meeting his eyes. Dean looked back to the creature.

“He’s being a little bitch right now, but he means ‘thank you,’” he explained.

“I do not,” Sam snapped. “Are we done here?”

“If I send you with Victor, are you going to attack him?”

“I will make an attempt to escape,” the creature confirmed, nodding.

“You aren’t at all interested in getting revenge on the people who kept you here?”

“Not so interested that I am willing to become a captive again.”

“But you told me how to work the binding.”

The creature sighed.

“Without your life force I would have died. You needed to trust me. I had little time and no other choice.”

“Hold up, life force? What did you _do_ to him?” Sam interrupted.

“Humans have a near _limitless_ ability to regenerate, you won’t even notice that it happened,” the creature assured them, looking at Dean. For some reason, it was important to him that Dean believe this.

“So how do we break the spell? Would cutting the silver work?”

The creature blinked at him.

“I… don’t know.”

“Let me get Charlie to take a look at it. She might recognize the sigils and have some kind of idea.”

The silver sparked again.

“Why is it doing that?”

“You gave me an order,” the creature answered in a clipped voice.

“What? No I didn’t.”

“You said ‘let me.’ That’s close enough to count.”

“That’s a figure of speech, man.”

“Apparently the spell doesn’t make exceptions for idioms,” the creature snapped.

“Okay. I’m sorry. Will you let Charlie take a look? She won’t hurt you and I think she might be able to help.”

The angel considered, then nodded.

 

 

Charlie had never seen anything like it. She took some pictures with her phone, promising to ask her coven for help.

“We meet on Thursdays for prayer circle and cosplay appreciation,” she told the angel. “Hopefully at least one of them will recognize these.”

The seraph blinked at her.

Dean was starting to get a tension headache. Probably just the smell of blood.

“I’m gonna go get some air,” he told the assembled group.

Sam, predictably, went with him.

“I don’t trust him,” Sam said once they were up the stairs. The upper room was mostly empty, just a couple people making their way in or out of the basement.

“That’s pretty obvious, man,” Dean replied. His head was pounding. “Maybe tone down the bulldog act a bit? I can take care of myself, you know.”

He didn’t miss the way Sam looked at him.

“I know. I’m sorry. He just- there was this light and I thought he’d vaporized you or something and I just… I got scared, okay? I’m supposed to be your bodyguard.”

“I was kidding about that.”

“Yeah, I know. But I like the idea of protecting you.”

“Oh my _god_. Come here, you giant sap.”

Dean pulled the younger man into a one-armed hug, but Sam wrapped both arms around him and held him tight, which ended up being a good decision because his head was practically _reverberating_ and his vision was getting fuzzy and he had just enough time to hear Sam say ‘knock it off, I can’t hold you’ and then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Long chapter is looooong. ](https://56.media.tumblr.com/65b069ec1d366940e14a407192b163c4/tumblr_n0dbqqqTqe1rmsxymo1_1280.jpg)
> 
> It's long because I rewrote it, like, bunches of times and every time it got longer. Now that I've posted this, it's canon, I can't go back, and I didn't want to establish anything until I knew a little more about where I wanted this to go. 
> 
> In other news, I passed 30k so I'm buying myself a shirt. Ya'll give yourselves a pat on the back; you made this happen. 
> 
> Chapters should start coming a little faster now that I've gotten over this hurdle and figured out how to progress from here. I've had the idea of adding Cas (spoiler: it's Cas) for a while now, but I wasn't sure if I could do it, or if it would work. But I think I can make it work. 
> 
> I had a tiny little bit of a meltdown on Sunday after I posted the last chapter, because I was really conflicted about whether I wanted to go this direction. I was freaking out because I have this tiny little spark of popularity and I just want to protect and cherish it and watch it grow. When I first started writing I was like "fuckit, I'll write what I want, don't like don't read!" but now there are *so many of you* I just really don't want to let you down.   
> Anyway, I didn't want to start writing in the middle of a freakout because I feel like I don't do my best work in that mindstate, so I went and wrote some smutty one-shots instead. (I can write shitty one-shots in *any* mindset, see if I don't.)   
> Right now I'm trying to write as though I'm not drowning in a Sea of Feels because, spoiler alert, I am. 
> 
> Husband and I are trying to make a youngling (which we are going to name Destiel Dmitri Ackles-Padalecki IV, regardless of gender) and the worst thing about not getting pregnant is, you don't get a letter in the mail like "after reviewing your application we, your ovaries, have decided not to blah blah blah blah." Nope, you find out because you start getting PMS and bleeding, which is absolutely *the shittiest* consolation prize possible. Anyway at this point my body has just ragequit and decided that we're stopping in the 'PMS' phase and not going *any further.* It's been like two weeks and I'm starting to think my heart's going to give out.   
> "Pissed" and "weepy" are not emotions that the human body was built to maintain simultaneously. And know what's really not helping? [This fucking song that I can't stop listening to.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknLaFJZ4v4)
> 
> What I'm trying to say is, the next chapter is just going to be Cas, Dean, and Sam eating ice cream in bed and talking about their feelings and giving each other backrubs. No segue, that's just how the chapter is going to start.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me two songs to write. The first is [Man, it's so loud in here,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoVxAqapakk) by They Might be Giants. 
> 
> The other is [Everybody Loves Me,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGbXIiP1q0) by OneRepublic.

“What did you do?”

The creature looked up from Charlie, it’s brow furrowed.

“ _What are you doing to him_?” Sam roared, picking the thing up by the arms and slamming it into the wall. “Fix him or I swear to god, I will kill you with my own two hands!”

“I’m not doing anything to him. He’s merely sleeping off the effects of the transfer. I may have…. overestimated earlier. I took too much. I was desperate and I apologize.”

“You apolo-?” Sam slammed him into the wall again. “Give it back to him! Whatever you took, give it back!”

The creature fixed him with a glare, and god, his eyes were intense.

“I cannot transfer the energy back. Healing him would weaken me even beyond my earlier state.”  
“What part of ‘I will kill you’ led you to believe I care?”

“He will be fine, and it is out of gratitude to _him_ that I have not attacked you for laying hands on me. My patience is wearing thin.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Sam dropped the creature and before it could even catch its balance, he’d retrieved his knife from its sheath and sliced it across the chest. The thing hissed in pain, staring daggers up at Sam.

“That’s my mark now, yeah? You’ve got to do what I say, and I say, _fix him._ ”

Those blue eyes were wide now, looking up at him with hate and fear.

“Please, human, your master will be fine. I swear to you. Make me do this and I will die for nothing. Please. I do not beg lightly.”

“Prove it.”

The creature reached for him and Sam withdrew.

“Please. Let me show you.”

Slowly, Sam inched back toward the thing on the floor. It reached for him with two fingers, pressing them against his forearm when he drew close.

It was looking up at him, and those blue eyes expanded until they were the entire world. Sam heard the thing speaking to him, though his lips weren’t moving and Sam knew there was no sound. It wasn’t speaking to him with sound, because it had a voice, and a mouth, and a body, but what this thing was, was _light._ Dim, flickering, blue-white and almost grey, but _light._ Sam looked closer, and saw the bright green ribbon of _Dean_ running through the white-blue of this creature, holding it together, binding it tight. The ribbon was fading at the edges, and where it ended, the white-blue was just a little bit brighter.

The white and blue mixed and churned and Sam saw desperation there. He saw fear, and anger, and regret, and sadness, and even hate, but no malice. No deception.

He drew back with a gasp.

“Castiel,” he whispered. “Your name is Castiel. You really are a seraph.”

“I told you I was.”

“How are you alive? You’re _shattered._ I mean, I’m not an expert at like, judging people’s soul-health or whatever, but there’s nothing _left_ of you. Dean’s the only thing holding you together.”

Castiel stared back at him.

“Do you still order me to heal him?”

Sam paused.

“You swear he’ll be okay?”

“Your master will wake within the hour. I swear it.”

“He’s not my master.”

“So you say.”

“I’m a free man. Got the papers and everything.”

“I’ve seen your soul, human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The seraph was very expressive, Sam realized with a hint of annoyance. He was saying all kinds of sarcastic, demeaning things, and he was doing it with nothing but his facial expressions. It made it very hard to argue.

“Sam? You down here?”

Sam’s attention turned to the stairs. Dean was there, a little pale, but otherwise looking okay. He released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Careful on the stairs. Don’t pass out again.”

“Yeah, okay _mom_. I’ll be careful on the stairs. What’s with you today?”

“Just have a limit on how many times I can watch you almost die.”

Dean gestured to Castiel. “So did he manage to convince you that he wasn’t killing me telepathically from all the way down here?”

Sam huffed, not looking at the angel. “Yeah, I’m convinced. But it is his fault you fainted.”

“I didn’t _faint,_ ” Dean said. “Wait, did you- Sam, did you _cut him?_ ”

“I thought you were dying,” Sam answered sullenly. “And he was killing you.”

“So you marked him?”

“I was only _half wrong,_ ” Sam snapped. “How are you not more pissed about this? He drained your life force until you passed out.”

“I told him he could and I’m awake now. No autopsy no foul.”

“Not to interrupt your lovers’ spat,” Charlie interrupted, “but can you have it elsewhere? I need to get some more photos.”

For what seemed like the first time, Sam realized the room was full of people. They were moving between the cages, categorizing and documenting and photographing and more than a few were shooting glances in his direction.

“We’re not having a spat. We’re done. Do you need help with identification?” Dean asked, turning his attention wholly to Charlie.

“Yeah, there’s like, an entire block of weird chimera looking things over there. If you could take a look, I’d appreciate it.”

Dean nodded and set off in that direction, leaving Sam, Charlie, and Castiel behind.

Sam suddenly didn’t know where he should be. It seemed evident that whatever Dean was doing, he didn’t want or need Sam there with him. And Castiel was probably one measly spell away from literally murdering him.

“Can I… do anything?” he asked Charlie, finishing lamely.

“Other than not beating the crap out of my witness?” Charlie asked. Her tone wasn’t entirely serious. “Maybe. By the sounds of it, you guys knew a lot of the same people. Cas, are there any other names you can give me?”

Castiel blinked, unsure as to whether he was being addressed.

“Alistair. He’s the one who killed… everything. When they realized they were going to be raided, he went through with a blade and a handgun. There were two others helping him, but I do not know their names.”

“Alistair. Tall guy with a lisp?” Sam asked. Castiel nodded. “Yeah, I know him. He and Azazel went to a lot of the same… parties.”

“That’s where Azazel marked you. You were his slave,” Castiel said, connecting pieces in his mind. He tilted his head at Sam. “You said you were a free man. How did this come to be?”

“Dean and Victor,” Sam said shortly. “What about Ruby, do you know a Ruby? Or Abaddon? Or a doctor by the name of Robert?”

Castiel shook his head.

“None of these are familiar to me. Do you have a photograph? Many of the people I saw were not formally introduced.”

Sam snorted. Castiel seemed unaware he’d said anything funny.

“We’ve got pictures back at the station,” Charlie said. “And we arrested a lot of people when we came in today. I’d like you to look through the photos and tell me if you can place any of them in the basement here.” Charlie’s face turned a little bit red. “It would be really helpful if we could get… details. Of what happened. If you’re comfortable talking about it. We have a couple counselors on staff if that helps?”

Castiel blinked.

“Why would that help?”

“Some people just feel more comfortable describing their… experiences. With a counselor. Instead of a cop.”

“Why?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Not sure. Maybe they feel less like they’re in trouble?”

“Why would they be in trouble for something that someone else did to them?”

“I dunno, Cas, that’s just how they feel.”

“Hmm.”

Castiel frowned, apparently lost in his own thoughts.  

 

 

 

The metal around Cas’s body looked like sterling silver. It even had the vaguely dark tarnish that silver got. But silver is soft and malleable.

This, not so much. Nothing touched it.

Castiel drew away when an officer approached him with a pair of bolt cutters, but Dean promised him it was safe, and he settled.

Victor had given the angel his trench coat, and it hung huge and bulky on the seraph’s frame. The collar he left loose to accommodate his wings. With his bare chest and legs, Sam thought it made him look like a playground flasher. He mentioned this to Dean, who did not find it funny.

The bolt cutters had no effect. An EMT produced a ring cutter, which was equally useless.

“It’s the spell,” Dean declared at last. “Whatever’s protecting this, it’s magic. And it’ll need to be magicked off.”

Castiel scowled.

The grounds of the manor were actually quite nice. The three of them stood on the shore of the lake, looking out over the water.

“Kinda sucks that a place like this gets filled up with shitty people doing shitty stuff,” Dean mused after a minute. “There should be like, kids playing here or something.”

No one had anything to say to that. The water lapped softly onto the beach. Somewhere behind them, a sprinkler kicked on, disturbing a flock of birds.

“So will you help us?” Dean asked, turning to Castiel. “Everybody else down there is dead. You’re the only one who can say what happened.”

“I would assume that the corpses speak for themselves,” the angel said, not taking his eyes off the water.

“But they don’t say who did it,” Dean argued. “We need you for that.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

Sam snorted. “What, angels don’t believe in revenge?”

Castiel turned his head slowly.

“What makes you think I need your legal system to exact revenge?”

“I’ll figure out how to get the cuffs off,” Dean said suddenly. “You help Victor with the investigation, and I’ll work on breaking the spell.”

The angel’s brow furrowed.

“Plus, you can crash at my place,” Dean added. Sam made a strangled little sound.

“Can I talk to you for a second, Dean?”

“I’ll do it,” Castiel said.

“Dean? A second?”

“Yeah Sammy?”

“Don’t call me Sammy,” Sam said, grabbing Dean by the arm and pulling him further down the bank. “What do you mean, ‘he can crash at your place?’ This is the same guy who tried to drain your soul like an hour ago. How do you know he won’t try the same thing again?”

“He asked, Sam. I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you this. When he touched me, it was like, he was in my mind. And I knew he was dying, and he asked me. And I let him. And maybe he took a little too much. Who cares? I’m fine, look at me. I’ve given up more with worse results. And I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like… I _saw_ him, you know? And he seems honest.”

“I saw it too,” Sam muttered, looking down.

“Is that what you did while I was out? Mind melded?”

“Yeah.”

“So you saw what I saw. We can trust him. He’s not gonna murder us in our sleep.”

“What if what we saw was a front? What if he can lie, show us just what he wants?”

Dean looked at him seriously.

“Do you think he can?”

Sam’s shoulders slumped.

“No,” he admitted.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. There’s just something about him.”

Dean looked at him for a minute, then broke out into a grin. He threw his arm around the taller man, drawing him in.

“Aww, don’t worry Sam. You’re still my favorite.”

He kissed him on the cheek, still grinning wide, then released him and headed back toward Castiel.

“Come on buddy, let’s go home,” he said cheerfully. Sam and Castiel exchanged dark looks.

 

 

Castiel fell asleep in the car.

Castiel fell asleep very quickly after they got on the road.

Castiel fell asleep and didn’t wake up for the whole trip, not even when they stopped for gas. Not even when they pulled onto Dean’s gravel driveway and hit a pothole. Not when Dean said “home sweet home” and Sam said “hey, wake up.”

Castiel didn’t stir until Sam climbed into the backseat with him and shook him by the lapels of his borrowed coat.

Even then, all Sam got was a slight groan and a brief glance of eyes so washed out they looked almost grey. Castiel reached out, pressing two fingers to Sam’s face, and Sam saw the light again.

The blue-white was barely a glow now, ashy and pale. The bright ribbon of _Dean_ was fraying at the edges, broken in places, and growing dull even as he watched.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Sam whispered.

_‘I hurt him for nothing,’_ the angel replied. _‘I took too much and it still wasn’t enough.’_

“Hey. Hey. You don’t get to hurt him for nothing. Hear me?”

“Sam?” Dean said from outside the car. His voice was alarmed. “Is he okay?”

_‘Tell him I said sorry?’_

Sam stared at the creature in his arms. Beyond the fading light, his skin was snow pale and his lips were turning blue. His wings were folded awkwardly on the seat behind him, and the tips of the feathers were turning a dull, chalky black.

Sam wondered if this is what it felt like, when the library burned at Alexandria. He wondered if people had stood by and watched something amazing and irreplaceable crumble into nothing. He wondered if they felt like this.

“Hey. No. No you don’t. Don’t you dare. Let me help you.”

Sam’s head was filled with Castiel’s confusion, too nebulous to even register as words. A protest. Sam didn’t trust him. Sam didn’t _like_ him. Sam didn’t want him there. Sam was angry for what he had done to Dean.

“No, fuck you. You’re not dying. Not on my watch. You need life energy or some shit? Take it. Hear me, angel? Take it.”

The collar flashed blue and Sam felt himself dissolving.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to the 'short daily chapter' model. For today, anyway. 
> 
> Has anyone else noticed that I learned italic usage from the guys at Marvel? No? Cool, cool. Just checking. 
> 
> Tomorrow I get to fly back to my home state of [Ohio](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2MVI2w7rzwI/S8zqnBf3cHI/AAAAAAAAAm4/faCU862zpbc/s1600/ohio.jpg) Fun fact about Ohio: we have more astronauts per capita than any other state, because something about being from Ohio makes you want to flee the fucking planet.   
> I am excited though, because I get to be back in my teeny tiny little hometown for our annual Esoteric Folk Celebration. It basically means I get to go to my old elementary school and eat pancakes. It's the little things in life. 
> 
> Those of you following my tumblr will note that the PMS is still going strong. Yesterday my boss said "isn't it strange how powerfully songs remind us of things" and yeah, it was 'twist and shout' and I cried at work. Fortunately everyone at my workplace is on some kind of happy pills, so the ridicule was light and sympathetic. It helps that I can work terminal better than my boss even while sniffling. 
> 
> Anyway, then I got home and learned about the fandom "two cakes" thing and I watched Jensen learn to tweet and my cat rolled over and long story short, some of you got comment replies at 3 AM which probably did not make much sense. That's also why this chapter is basically a giant metaphysical mental furpile. 
> 
>  
> 
> Speaking of which: I should clarify, I'm not infertile, I'm just horrifically impatient. I only get one shot per month and then I have to wait two weeks to find out if it worked and *another* two weeks to try again when it didn't. My sense of time hasn't adjusted since I was seven years old, so "two weeks" is about how long it would take for a manned mission to get to Betelgeuse. No mortal can conceive of such a timespan, I'm sure of it. 
> 
> Plus, I made the mistake of telling people "we're trying" so every time there's a family function people are like "so did you bring a baby? No? Oh... we wanted to hold a baby. Maybe next time remember to bring the baby?" It's the first baby in the family so the elders are getting a bit antsy.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [The Projectionist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uEnxCD4CRU) by ThouShaltNot.

Dean considered dragging them inside but they were big, and heavy, and they’d be just as unconscious inside, so it wouldn’t really help anyway.

Castiel the half-naked trenchcoat-angel was spread out across the back of the bench seat, his wings bunched up against the passenger door in a way that would probably leave them tingling when he woke up. And Sam, who had climbed in to try to wake him up, had instead passed out on top of him. Sam’s head was lying on Castiel’s chest, and one of the angel’s arms was lying over his wide shoulders. Their legs were tangled together and Sam was just beginning to drool.

Dean took a photo.

He should be worried. He knew that. Two people had just been rendered inexplicably unconscious in the back of his car- it’s the sort of thing that should worry a guy.

But he wasn’t. Kneeling on the front bench, his arms crossed on the seat back, he could see they were fine. Or rather, _feel_ they were fine. He didn’t know how to explain it. Back at the manor, he’d felt he could trust Cas. And now, looking at the two of them, he felt that they weren’t in danger.

It was like when he woke up at night and felt Sam sleeping next to him. Even when the other man wasn’t touching him, he could still sense Sam’s presence, through body heat, or the sound of breathing, or just some undefined sixth sense. Feeling Sam there let him relax and go back to sleep.

He felt that now.

Castiel woke up first, groaning softly, blinking at Dean with bright blue eyes. Dean wondered if they were glowing, or if it was just a trick of the light.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Dean said in a low voice. Sam was still out.

“He made me,” Castiel said, his hand tightening on Sam’s still shoulders. “I have his mark. He made me.”

Sam groaned.

“Fuck, my head hurts,” he mumbled into Cas’s bare chest.

And then he realized he was mumbling into Cas’s bare chest and he sat up fast enough to bang his head on the roof of the car.

“The fuck? _Ow._ ”

“You’re alive,” Castiel breathed. The amazement on his face was reassuring to no one. “I tried not to- do you have any idea what you almost did?”

“Uh, saved your life? You’re welcome?”

“You told me to _take your life force,_ you _imbecile,”_ Cas snapped. “Do you have any idea how _many_ of you I could absorb and still not be back to full strength?”

“I figured you’d know I didn’t mean _all_ of it,” Sam grumbled, trying to extricate himself from the tiny space.

“ _I_ knew,” Castiel hissed. “The _collar_ didn’t.”

“The wha- oh. I forgot about that. Did that come across as an order?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Well, good on you for not sucking Sammy’s soul out. And good on you for not letting an angel die in Baby’s backseat. Pats on the back all around. Who wants burgers?”

“How long were we out?”

“About twenty minutes. I figured I’d give it an hour and then start trying to wake you up for real.”

Sam rubbed his head.

“Yeah, when you passed out back at the manor, it was about twenty minutes then, too.”

Dean hauled the duffel bags out of the trunk, slamming it with his foot. Castiel was having some trouble maneuvering his wings out of the backseat. Sam opened the door, catching him by the collar and hauling him to his feet before he could fall.

“Is that normal? Twenty minutes for an energy transfer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never actually seen one done before.”

“So we were your _guinea pigs?_ ” Sam asked.

“Dean was my guinea pig. You were acting as my captor,” Castiel reminded him. He was stretching his wings out one at a time, giving them little shakes like he was trying to wake them up.

“Yeah thanks, glad to know you only gambled with _his_ life.”

Dean fumbled with his keys, passing the bags off to Sam as he picked the right one off the ring.

“Casa Winchester,” he announced, pushing the door open. Cas looked around.

“Sam led me to believe it was brighter,” he said after a moment.

“Not at dusk,” Dean said cheerfully, kicking his boots off and honing in on the kitchen. “Are you guys not starving? I’m making burgers. Fat ones.”  

 

Castiel curtly informed them that he didn’t eat, and retreated into his room. Unlike Sam, he didn’t sit in the doorway. He shut the door and sat on the bed and stared angrily at the cuffs around his wrists.

Sam turned the stove burner on while Dean made patties. He added oil and set the heat to medium so the oil wouldn’t splatter, and then he went into the room they shared. He came back out with a pair of Dean’s pants and one of his own shirts. Dean had just been thinking that the wider shoulders might help accommodate the wings better.

“We’ll probably have to cut this or something to make it fit,” Sam said, surveying the garment. “The pants should be okay though.”

Castiel opened the door before Sam could even knock, surveying the taller man’s offering with a wrinkled nose.

“The coat is insufficient?”

Sam looked taken aback.

“I dunno, I just figured you might want pants.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes, tilting his head at Sam.

“Oh,” he said, his eyes widening. “Yes. Because that’s what Dean did for you. Yes. I accept.” He took the bundle of clothes and shut the door without further discussion.

Sam looked at Dean.

“He’s weird. I don’t like him.”  
“Have a little sympathy, Sam. He’s been through some fucked up shit. You were weird when you first came here.”

Sam huffed and walked back into the kitchen. There were tomatoes and mushrooms in the fridge and he began slicing them without being asked.

“You of all people know what Azazel’s capable of. Can you blame him for not trusting us? For being desperate?”

“I can blame him for bleeding off your life force like a vampire.”

“Is that money still in the bathroom?”

Sam blinked.

“What?”

“The four dollars and some-odd cents that you said you hid in the bathroom. Is it still there?”

“I guess. I haven’t moved it.”

Sam pushed the vegetables to the side and set to browning the buns. The oil in the pan was popping, and Sam added a shake of cumin. It was Dean’s secret burger ingredient, and the only spice he ever added to the meat.

“Maybe you should go get it,” Dean said, sliding the rounded patties onto the pan. Sam replaced the glass lid and did what he was told.

 

It was obvious Sam was embarrassed about the money. He kind of held it out to Dean like he was expecting the older man to hit him, and Dean sighed.

“Keep it, Sam. It’s not about the money. It’s about trusting me. Do you?”

Sam nodded.

“But you didn’t then, and that’s why you took it.”

Sam nodded again, not meeting Dean’s eyes.

“So the two of you aren’t really that different.”

Sam wrinkled his nose at that, and Dean sighed.

“Give him time. And hold onto that. Maybe look at it now and then.”

“It’s not the same thing. What I took and what he took.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s the- what’s it called- the _principle_ of the thing.”

“Yeah, well, in _principle_ it’s not the same thing.”

Dean rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the food, flipping the burgers once more and then sliding them onto buns. He added a full set of toppings to his, finishing it off with a glob of mustard. Sam did the same.

“I thought you didn’t like mushrooms?”

Sam shrugged.

“I dunno, seems like they’d go good on this.”

Dean grinned.

“Like you don’t even know.”

 

After dinner, Sam put the food away and Dean did dishes. Castiel didn’t come out of his room. Occasionally, one of them would shoot a glance at the locked door, but neither of them said anything.

“Want to help me do a spell?” Dean asked when the kitchen was clean. Sam nodded.

“Alright. I’ll go get the stuff.”

Dean’s spellcasting equipment- such as it was- was kept in a plastic tote under his bed. He dragged it out and popped it open, looking over the assembled gear. There were a couple of tackle boxes filled with feathers and bones and fossils and yeah, a couple of crystals, they were useful sometimes. A leather satchel held a collection of essential oils, and he had a spice rack full of jars of various plants. He had three different spheres as well, plain glass balls picked up at a shop two states over where _definitely_ no one would recognize him.

He still felt a little dumb about his particular flavor of magic sometimes.

He grabbed what he needed and headed back out to the living room.

Sam had already pushed the couch out of the way, clearing a space in the middle of the room. With the carpet rolled up, the chalked symbols on the floor were clearly visible. The circle itself was a permanent mark, put there by Dean’s dad back when he was a teenager and it was becoming evident that spells were going to be a semi-regular part of their hunting process. Drawing circles was painstaking and error-prone, and the elder Winchester had finally thrown up his hands and done it in white paint.  

Sam set out the candles while Dean marked the crosshatches and runes. Each of the candles was then joined by a sprig of sage, and a dab of lavender oil.

Dean rapped on Castiel’s door.

“You up? I’ve got an idea for a spell, if you want to come give it a try.”

The door swung open.

“I don’t sleep. I am always ‘up,’” Castiel grumbled, glaring. He’d ditched the trench coat in favor of a pair of jeans, slung low over his bare hips.

“Good to know. Come on, you’re over here.”

Castiel regarded the spell circle with a dubious expression.

“Just sit in the middle and try to feel hopeful, will you? You’re going to throw the whole thing off with your shitty attitude.”

“This is extremely primitive magic,” Castiel said, but he sat in the middle anyway.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t go to school for it or anything. It just kinda works for me. I need to put some of this on you. Is it okay if I touch you?”

“Your soul is holding my life force together, we are joined as intimately as it is possible for two creatures to be.”

Dean blinked. Castiel sighed.

“Yes, human. You may touch me.”

“Okay. This is a weird combination of smells, but just bear with me and it’ll be over soon.”

Dean twisted a small dark bottle open, and the room filled with the smell of roses. He tipped the oil onto the middle finger of his right hand, leaving a sheen. This he used to make small marks on Castiel’s forehead, lower lip, throat, sternum, and navel.

Orange blossom was next, anointing the insides of Cas’s wrists, elbows, and knees. After a moment of consideration, Dean also added the oil to the inside of the largest joint in each wing. The feathers fluffed when he reached for them.

“I’m just gonna put a dab of oil there.”

Slowly, Castiel spread his wing out to give Dean access. Dean could tell he was trying hard not to flinch away from the touch.

In the light, it was obvious that some of the feathers were missing.

“Did they take them?” Sam asked, gesturing to the holes in the plumage.

“They thought they were good luck,” Castiel said stiffly.

“They’re beautiful,” Dean breathed. Up close, the shafts caught the light like St. Elmo’s fire, and he could see a pattern of spots and swirls in the black vanes. Castiel pulled them back, holding them tight behind his back.

“They turn pale when they’re pulled out. There’s no magic in them,” the angel said hastily, turning to try to keep them both in sight. Dean felt suddenly uneasy, like something was about to go wrong but he didn’t know what.

“We’re not going to try to take them,” Sam said. Very slowly, he made his way around the outside of the circle, coming to stand near Dean. The uneasiness faded somewhat, and Dean thought maybe he should try to stand near Sam more often.

“They’d do you no good if you did,” Castiel reiterated, still holding them tight behind his back.

There was a growing knot of fear in Dean’s stomach, and it was making his hair stand on end because he didn’t know where it was coming from. He and Sam were both trying to reassure Castiel, but the angel looked defensive, not dangerous.

“Do we seem like them?” Sam asked. “I mean, you were with them for a while. I know that look. So you know what they’re like. Their methods. Do we seem like them?”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed.

“You mud-creatures all seem the same to me. You’re not as different as you like to think.”

“No, cut the shit. We’ve seen inside you and that means you’ve seen inside us. You know that I know.”

“You don’t know _anything,_ ” Castiel hissed. “You can _die,_ human. What you saw is a _caress_ compared to the things they did to the immortals in their possession. You were a sexual favor and a _pet,_ I was a medical curiosity.”

He gritted his teeth, swallowing hard before he went on.

“They wanted to see how I worked, and so they _took me apart._ ”

Dean’s stomach rolled, but Sam’s expression didn’t change.

“I know,” he said softly. “In the car. You showed it to me. All of it.”

Sam’s hand settled gently over his lower belly, his fingers splayed. His eyes didn’t leave Castiel’s face. Castiel paled.

“That shouldn’t- I didn’t-”

“I saw you, and I know you saw me. So I’ll ask you again. Do we seem like them?”

Castiel slumped, his wings relaxing somewhat.

“No,” he said at last. Sam nodded.

“Good. Now let Dean finish his voodoo.”

“It’s not voodoo,” Dean muttered. He wasn’t sure exactly what just passed between the two of them, but the fear in his belly was easing. He’d ask Sam about it later. There was a proud sort of affection associated with the thought of talking to Sam, maybe tonight, while they were curled up in bed. Maybe it would be one of Sam’s good days and they’d be able to sleep curled together, limbs all entangled and the taller man’s breath warm on his skin.

He shook his head.

_Focus._

That warm little bud of affection was still there. He pushed it aside. He had work to do.

“This is ginger,” he told Castiel, holding up another dark bottle. “I need to rub it into the metal of the cuffs, and it’s going to take a couple minutes because I need to say an orison while I do it. It kind of focuses the spell on the cuffs.”

Castiel nodded, and Dean felt a sense of grim determination that didn’t really match the severity of the incantation he was preparing. It was just a general purifying spell, and here he was steeling himself like he was about to do something dangerous.

He must be tired.

For a few minutes they were all quiet, letting Dean do the orison. He started with the ankle cuffs, making sure to work the oil into the full circumference of each bangle. He did the wrists next, careful not to disturb the dots of oil already on Castiel’s skin. The smell of ginger was getting uncomfortably strong, and Sam went and opened the door, propping it open to let a little air in.

The collar was last, and Castiel hesitated slightly before lifting his chin and granting Dean access to his throat. Dean spun the band slowly, rubbing the oil into the silver and trying to ignore the pounding of his heart. The angel wasn’t making any overtly threatening gestures, wasn’t even _looking_ at Dean, so the hunter was completely at a loss for why his heart was beating so fast.

“Okay. I think that should do it,” Dean said at last. “I’ve just gotta do one last invocation to pull everything together and we’ll see if it worked.”

This one he didn’t know by heart, so he had to go back into the bedroom and get one of his books while Sam lit the candles. It didn’t take him long to find the page, and he dutifully read the prayer (in Latin, of course, because all the old academics worked in Latin. The spells worked just as well in English, but Dean could read Latin and it wasn’t worth the effort of translating them all) feeling slightly self-conscious with Castiel and Sam both staring expectantly at him. The mild embarrassment was joined by a discordant sense of anticipation and excitement, like he was doing something much more serious than a purification spell.

He finished the prayer and closed the book. Nothing happened. The candles sputtered slightly, but that might have been the draft from the open door.

“Did it work?” Castiel asked.

“Spin in a circle,” Sam said with a poorly concealed grin. It became even more poorly concealed when the cuffs sparked blue and Castiel spun once on the ball of his foot.

Dean tried not to laugh, even as a spike of irritation went through him.

“Sam, that’s a dick move.”

“I concur,” Castiel said, glaring at Sam.

Dean couldn’t help grinning. Sam’s smile was contagious, because who could look at that face and not feel happy?   
Castiel, apparently, because he looked away, scowling but not exactly angry.

“May I remove the anointings now? They’re quite pungent,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“Yeah, shower’s down the hall on the-” but Dean didn’t get to finish the statement because Castiel’s body did a little shiver, his feathers puffing and then settling, and the scent of oil began to fade.

“I’m more than capable of cleaning myself, thank you,” the angel said acerbically. Dean felt a twinge of irritation. He ran his hand through his hair.

“I’ve got a couple ideas for things we can try tomorrow, but I think I’m done for tonight. Cas, if you need anything in the next eight hours, you’re on your own.”  

 

Dean was out before his head hit the pillow. He dreamed of a party where everyone wore masks.

Sam settled in beside him, not waking the older man even when he lay beside him, pillowing his head on his shoulder. Sam dreamed he was a child, running through the halls of a now-familiar house.

Castiel didn’t sleep. When he felt the other two drift off, he slipped out the door. The moon hung bright over the forest, making the birch trees glow like ghosts. Castiel ventured into the trees, eventually settling down onto the top of a large, flat rock. He was still watching the stream when the sun came up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Husband described this as "Dean's Home for Wayward Broken Hunks." 
> 
> I laughed really, really, really, really hard. 
> 
> This chapter was surprisingly difficult to write, considering how little actually happens in it. The dialogue and motivations were difficult to get right. I kept having what basically boils down to [this problem.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTq-9kHYxc) So, this is what I settled on. I'm really glad for all those acting classes I took in college because, although I am a terrible actor, I did learn a lot about showing motivation through actions and tone, rather than just stating your intentions outright. Never thought it would come in handy and yet here I am. 
> 
> I wrote a lot of this dialogue in my head during the wedding/reception/afterparty because I didn't really know a lot of people there and a lot of the people in the groom's party were pretty clearly not happy to be there. So some of Castiel's mannerisms in my head for this chapter are based on people attending their father's wedding to a woman they don't like, in a second marriage they religiously disapprove of.   
> As a side note, behind the altar there were a series of paintings depicting the tribulations of Christ, and in one of them- okay. There's this huge marble pillar and he's like, chained with his arms around it and he's got his knees bent so he's having to hold himself up by, like pulling on the chains? And his shoulders and arms are _ripped,_ and there's this dude behind him with this flogger- not a whip, mind you. Whips will make you bleed, they hurt, floggers sting but leave you warm....   
>  Anyway, long story short, I'm definitely going to hell.   
> I could _not_ stop staring at this painting.   
>  It was a brilliant example of predicament bondage, and I'm gonna use it in a fic later.   
> Hell, I tell you. 
> 
> Unrelated note: some of you have expressed a desire to hang out IRL. I am super boring IRL. Case in point: after the wedding, I got drunk. For the third time in my life. Last time I was drunk, I got really excited and started sorting a jar of coins. This time I watched Daredevil and wrote an unexpected followup to [Lessons From Heaven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6044419/chapters/13858855) which actually turned out pretty well considering I was a little past walking straight when I wrote it. Scratch 'pretty well,' I'm actually really proud of that one.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [I Never Liked You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rbb0dWHSI) by Rogue Traders. 
> 
> This is only the first half of this chapter. I'll post the second half tomorrow. Swearsies.

The early morning sunlight was catching in Dean’s hair, making it gleam gold.

Sam’s dreams had been confusing and fragmented, unfamiliar people and places that he pictured as though he’d known them all his life. He’d woken up vaguely distressed, and the first thing he saw was Dean.

And that made it all okay.

Sam reached out, fingers hesitating over the skin of Dean’s bare shoulder. He knew how it would feel- warm and solid, soft skin layered over hard muscle, the faint thrum of heartbeat just under the surface. He knew exactly how Dean would be, and feeling it again wasn’t worth waking the other man up.

His other shoulder, the left one, was burrowed under the pillows, and Sam’s mood darkened slightly when he remembered the handprint marring the skin. Castiel’s handprint.

The memory replayed in his mind as clearly as though he were watching it happen all over. Dean’s frantic attempts to free the angel from his bindings, and then Castiel, coming to life all at once and gripping Dean with an intensity that made them both burn. The light had been too bright to look at, and so Sam had gone toward them blind, reaching for Dean’s collar and praying, _praying_ there was something left to grab.

The seraph could have destroyed them both, easy as breathing, but Sam didn’t care about that. He’d get Dean away from the creature, or he’d go down with him. There wasn’t another option. He hadn’t even needed to think about it. He didn’t remember making a decision. He only remembered the terror of his world dropping out from under him and the _need_ to get it back.

Dean was a constant, a fixed center point in a world that wouldn’t stop spinning. Sam knew he was clinging too hard to the other man, but in moments like this, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Dean felt safe, comfortable, in a way Sam had never felt with another person. Dean didn’t have expectations of him, didn’t want things from him, he just… _was._

Dean’s brow was furrowing in his sleep, and Sam reached out, smoothing his hair back in what he hoped was a calming gesture. Dean’s hair was fine and light, and soft, for a man. Sam found himself running his fingers through it and pulled back. He didn’t want to pull away. He wanted to comb his hands through the blonde spikes until he knew every whorl and cowlick. He wanted to go over every inch of Dean’s body, looking and touching and caressing and at the same time, he wanted to pull the other man close and bury his face in Dean’s shoulder and never let go. He wanted to feel Dean above him, that familiar weight, all their limbs tangled together. He wanted to hold him down and kiss him until he begged and then ride him until those green eyes clouded with ecstasy.

He _wanted_ all these things, he realized, and then he realized that Dean was waking up, blinking sleepily at him, already smiling slightly when he stretched and murmured “ _hey.”_

 _Oh thank god,_ Sam had time to think, and then he was rolling half on top of Dean, kissing him deep.

“Good morning to you, too,” Dean laughed when Sam let him up for air. He reached up to cup the side of Sam’s jaw and Sam felt like he was going to break. He pushed into the touch, nuzzling against Dean’s palm, and it wasn’t enough. He needed to do something and he didn’t know what it was. Every nerve in his body was pulled tight, and he knew it had something to do with Dean, but there was no direction, no goal, just a persistent, growing _energy._

He leaned in, kissing hard and frantic, the stud in his tongue clicking against Dean’s teeth as he delved into the other man’s mouth. Dean’s hands were on his sides, holding him tight and steady, and he ground down into the solid warmth of Dean’s body.

There was no finesse to this. No strategy. Abaddon would be disgusted, but Sam didn’t care. His body was thrumming with desperation, beating through him like a second heartbeat, one that just said _want, want, want._

“Please,” he murmured, lips brushing over Dean’s mouth as he spoke. “Please, I don’t-”

He pulled back and Dean followed, rolling Sam onto his back and covering him with his body. Sam’s hips bucked, pressing up into Dean’s hip and the friction was like molten gold, flowing up his spine and pooling in his belly. Dean was hard, too, long and thick against Sam’s belly and for some reason that excited him.

Dean pulled away from the kiss, dipping to mouth at the hollow of Sam’s throat. Sam thought there would probably be bruises there, afterwards, and that excited him too.

His dick was driving him crazy, begging for attention with a single-mindedness he hadn’t felt since the early days of his training. He arched his back, sliding their bodies together, pushing against Dean with a groan. The older man pulled back, looking at him carefully.

“What do you want me to do, Sam?”

“Anything,” Sam begged. Dean was too far away and he pushed himself up onto his elbows, pressing his lips to Dean’s mouth. The angle was weird but the contact was glorious. “Anything you want, just, _please,_ Dean.”

“You sure?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Dean pushed him back onto the bed, kissing him all the way down. His hands brushed over Sam’s bare sides, catching on the waistband of his pants with a hesitation that felt like a question. Sam answered with a moan and Dean pulled back, sliding the loose sleep pants over his hips.

Dean’s mouth was hot on his skin, leaving a line of wet heat up his thigh and over his hip. Sam made impatient noises that turned desperate when he felt Dean’s cheek sliding along the edge of his cock.

It wasn’t that Sam had never gotten a blowjob before. Far from it. He’d gotten them from other slaves during training, or during the various performances he’d participated in over the years. He’d even gotten them from owners who got off on being degraded, reduced to the level of sucking off a slave. Sam was well accustomed to the feeling of mouths on him. But not like this.

Dean wasn’t experienced. He had no technique and his gag reflex was too strong and it was pretty clear he had no idea what to make of the jewelry adorning the head of Sam’s cock.

It didn’t matter.

Dean gave head like he kissed, all leisurely enjoyment and aimless exploration. His rhythm was nonexistent and he made detours across Sam’s hips and up his belly and down his thighs. He kept his weight on one elbow, his arm under Sam’s leg, stroking the side of his ass almost absently.

Sam kept his arms above his head, crossed at the wrists the way he’d been taught, his fingers brushing against the headboard. He felt like he was falling, or floating down some torrid river. His stomach was twisting, like he was excited or afraid or both, but every time it threatened to spike into something painful, Dean was there, keeping him centered just like always.

Dean’s free hand traveled up his side, past his belly and over his ribs, nails scratching lightly against Sam’s skin. Sam hesitated, then reached for him. Their fingers laced together and Dean held him tight.

Sam didn’t know if he was supposed to come, and he didn’t think he had the words to ask. The river was cresting, becoming a hot wave pushing him forward, faster and faster. Something crashed out in the kitchen and there was a momentary burst of confusion, but he quickly smothered it. He was falling. He managed a weak “ _Dean_ ,” but all Dean did was squeeze his hand and take him deeper as the wave crashed down.

 

 

There were spots on the ceiling, twisting lazily across the chipped plaster in a reassuring rainbow of colors. The tips of Sam’s fingers were tingling, and he realized he was still gripping the headboard. His other hand was still entwined with Dean’s, and with a guilty jolt he realized he hadn’t done anything for the other man at all.

Dean didn’t seem too upset about the disparity. He was still lying between Sam’s legs, his head pillowed on one of Sam’s thighs, distractedly playing with the hair leading down from his navel. He saw Sam looking at him, and smiled.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Sam wasn’t sure what else to say.

“You want me to-?”

Dean shook his head.

“Weirdly enough, it’s going down. I feel… I dunno, I feel good.” Dean’s brow creased slightly. “You good? I know you said, before, but…”

Sam shook his head with a little grin. He was confused, but not too worried about it.

“I’m good. Maybe it’s just the shock from yesterday. Made me wonder what I’d do without you and I guess something just… triggered.”

Dean nodded once, then rolled off him, stretching out and rolling his shoulders.

“Whatever it was,” he said, climbing off the bed and pulling on yesterday’s shirt, “I’m not complaining. You wake me up like that _whenever_ you want.”

“You didn’t even come,” Sam pointed out. Dean tipped his head.

“That’s true.”

His line of thought was interrupted by another crash from out in the kitchen.

“Oh yeah, the angel,” Dean said. Sam scrambled back into his pants and followed him out into the hallway.

“What gives?”

Castiel was standing in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by the shards of what appeared to be half a vase. The other half, oddly enough, was on the other side of the room, piled against the far wall.

“Your vessels are too fragile,” Castiel groused.

“They’re _glass,_ ” Sam said sourly, picking a path to the broom closet. “What were you doing with a vase?”

“Moving water, obviously,” Cas replied, rolling his eyes. His tone was dismissive but his posture was defensive, shoulders back and wings flaring to the side.

“Why?” Dean asked with genuine interest. “Do you drink?”

“No. I don’t. I just needed to move some water.”

“Why? Where to?”

Castiel shrugged helplessly.

“Is that what you’ve been doing all night?” Sam asked, fishing out the dustpan. “Carrying water around?”

“ _No,_ ” Cas snapped. “I’ve been outside. I just came in for this one thing and got distracted by all the…” he waved his hand dismissively. “… fornicating.”

Dean made a little choking sound.

“Could you hear us?”

“No, I could feel it,” Cas said slowly, like he was explaining something very simple. “Sam experiences things very clearly.”

Sam’s stomach lurched.

“You were _feeling_ me having sex? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Cas rounded on him.

“It’s not my fault, the two of you were resonating so strongly other _humans_ could probably pick it up. I couldn’t _not._ ”

Sam thought he could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. And the day had started so well.

Fucking angels.

Cas rubbed his temples.

“So what happened to my jug?” Dean asked after a minute.

“I got startled and dropped it.” Castiel paused. “It was somewhat… overwhelming.”

“What, you’ve never been around sex before?”

“Not between people I was bonded to.”

Cas said it casually, a little _too_ casually, which would have been a red flag in Sam’s book even if the words themselves hadn’t been so obviously weird.

“Back the fuck up, what now?” Dean asked. So apparently it was a red flag in his book too.

“Yesterday?” Cas prompted. “The transfer of life force? It’s a bond, it goes two ways.” He looked from Sam to Dean and back. “You don’t know about this?”

“So you can see into our heads now?” Sam asked, aghast. Cas frowned at him, tipping his head.

“Haven’t you noticed? You’ve been feeling the minds of three people for almost a full day and you haven’t noticed at _all_?” Castiel paused, taking in their blank stares, then shook his head. “I knew your minds were chaotic, but I had no idea it was so bad.”

“Bullshit,” Dean said emphatically. “Maybe it’s different for angels, but I for one can say there’s _no way_ I can read minds. I’m not getting anything off either of you. Sam, what am I thinking?”

He furrowed his brow, apparently thinking something very hard in Sam’s general direction. Sam shrugged his shoulders.

“Probably something like ‘this is bullshit, I want breakfast,’” he guessed.

“No!” said Dean triumphantly, turning to Castiel with a smugness that Sam realized he _could_ feel.

“You were building a dam,” he said suddenly. Cas froze and Dean looked between the two of them with a look of confused alarm.

“What? He was what?”

“That’s what you were doing with the vase. You were going back outside to mess with the creek.”

Castiel tried not to react, but the feathers along the edges of his wings fluttered slightly.

“Because you’re in my head,” Sam said slowly. “And that’s what _I_ do when I need to think.”

“I think that means you’re in _his_ head,” Dean clarified, earning him twin glares.

“That explains this morning,” Sam mused.

Dean blinked.

“What?”

“I woke up feeling… weird. I must have been getting it from you.”

Dean shook his head.

“I don’t feel weird.”

“Did you want to have sex?”

Dean paused.

“Well, I mean, as a general rule, yeah.”

“Can you _not_?” Castiel interrupted. “It was bad enough I had to be here for the actual event, please spare me the indignity of a _discussion._ ”

“Hey, _you’re_ the one who tricked us into getting all head-bonded, so pardon me if the fallout is making you _uncomfortable_.”

“I didn’t _trick_ you-”

“Why is half the jug over there?” Dean interrupted, tipping his head toward the far wall. Cas rolled his eyes hard enough that his shoulders moved.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll clean it up.”

“No, I want to know,” Dean said, and Sam realized he was getting tendrils of curiosity and exasperation and embarrassment creeping into the sides of his thoughts. And a little sadness, maybe?

“Dean, do you feel sad?”

Dean paused.

“Huh. A little? That’s weird.”

“Cas, why are you sad.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Castiel repeated, and the sadness disappeared under a wave of irritation.

“Because you broke the vase?” Sam mused, but no, that didn’t make sense.

“Because I couldn’t _fix_ it.”

“It’s just a jar, man. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not about the vase,” Cas hissed, but the fight was already leaking out of him. “I should be able to fix it, that’s all.”

“It’s glass,” Sam said. “It generally can’t be fixed.”

Castiel sighed, then crouched down, making an odd little twisting motion with his hand. The shards under his fingers spun, floating up as though caught in a whirlpool. Four or five of them fit together, fusing into the rough shape of the vase rim. Castiel caught it in his hand, holding it up for inspection. It was a little jagged. The pieces hadn’t fit back exactly the way they should, and as Sam watched, the piece cracked. Part of it fell to the floor with a tinkling noise.

Castiel hurled the remaining fragment at the wall, where it shattered into pieces that joined their brethren on the floor.

“Well,” said Dean. “That solves that mystery.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news for Sam's recovery process: he gets to deal with his sexual hangups inside the horny feedback loop of Dean's mind. [Are there consent issues there?](https://media.giphy.com/media/GujIAqrG6nNcI/giphy.gif)
> 
>  
> 
> Like I said in the opener, this is only the first half of this chapter. I'm going to have to post the second half tomorrow. Why is this only half a chapter? Well, children, let me tell you a story. 
> 
> I'm sitting here in the bedroom, trying diligently to get the next chapter ready, when in comes Husband. Husband says "know what we should do?" and I guessed "sit quietly and let me write?" 
> 
> Nope, that's not what he wanted to do. So he flops down on the bed and begins masturbating theatrically and I said "if you keep that up, my chapter is going to be late and I'm going to tell my readers that you did this."  
> He did not stop.  
> [The chapter is not done. ](http://33.media.tumblr.com/b14dc4f67183e4818e9f5e31fc35d72b/tumblr_inline_nlshk67ake1r2eu1z.gif)  
> TMI? Idc. 
> 
> Anyway, hope the sex tides you over until tomorrow when we learn about Castiel's Broken Magic and maybe as a reward I'll tell you about my fourteen cats.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [I wish I was the moon.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCV-YMD6oXA)

Sam was staring at the shattered glass, wide-eyed.

“That’s amazing.”

Castiel fixed him with a cold stare.

“Yes, I managed to make a few fragments stick together momentarily. The mind boggles.”

Sam’s head was filling with loss, huge and unimaginable.

“Cas,” he said quietly. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Look, if you want the jug fixed I can probably put it back together. Just gather up the pieces into a silver bowl-”

“It is _not,_ ” Castiel repeated slowly, “ _about the jug._ ”

“ _Should_ you be able to fix it?” Sam asked. “Under normal circumstances?”

Castiel shook his head.

“This is a pointless topic of conversation and I’m tired of discussing it.”

“Tell me.”

The collar sparked and Cas made a sound like he was trying to inhale and cough at the same time.

“I should be able to fix it,” he ground out. Dean looked sharply at Sam.

“Not cool, man.”

Sam was getting twin feelings of irritation and anger, but he ignored them.

“Tell me why you can’t do it now.”

Castiel was glaring daggers at him.

“I’m running on what could be termed ‘emergency reserves’ and I have been for quite some time. The power isn’t there.”

“Why?”

“Fuck off.”

“ _Tell me_ why,” Sam amended. The collar was glowing now, blue sparks winding along the metal, growing increasingly faster and brighter.

“Because I haven’t been home,” Cas said, forcing each word out through clenched teeth.

“Where’s-”

“That’s _enough_ , Sam.”

Dean crossed his arms, meeting Sam’s exasperated look.

“What?”

“He doesn’t want to tell you, you can’t just force him.”

“Why not?”

Dean paused.

“Because he doesn’t want you to.”

Sam furrowed his brow.

“But he’s not acting in his best interests.”

“And you are?”

“Sure.” Sam turned back to Castiel. “Tell us how to help you.”

“ _Sam-!_ ” Dean said, exasperated, at the same time Castiel said “Life force. Another dozen transfers, at least.”

“See?” said Sam, shrugging off the pointed jabs of exasperation and anger. “We can do that.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Castiel snapped, drawing back from him. His wings were tucked tight behind his bare back.

“I know you didn’t, and you wouldn’t, but you needed to, and that’s why I made you,” Sam said simply.

“That’s not your decision, Sam,” Dean said in a low voice. Sam realized he could feel the other man there, at the edges of his mind. Dean was roiling like storm clouds.

“Why? If he’s going to be all sullen and defensive instead of letting us help him, then maybe it shouldn’t be his decision.” The storm stilled, replaced with a subtle confusion. Sam pushed on. “It’s probably harder for you to understand because you’ve never been owned.”

Dean’s jaw dropped.

“Ah,” said Castiel, nodding. “You were trained. I’d forgotten.” He tilted his head toward Dean. “Sam has had his share of sullen and defensive decisions. He learned a lot of things about the transfer of control.”

He said all this evenly, calmly, as though discussing the weather. There was nothing to betray his intentions, leaving Sam all the more shocked when the angel slammed into him a moment later. His momentum sent the two of them crashing to the floor, knocking the air out of Sam’s lungs as the smaller man landed atop him. Castiel’s hands were fisted in his shirt, and the sparking collar matched the blue fire of his eyes as he leaned in close.

“I will not be trained, human. Do not test me.”

Sam hooked one long leg around his assailant, flipping them over and pinning the angel to the floor.

“Don’t act like a fucking idiot and I won’t have to.”

“You are a _child,_ ” Castiel hissed, struggling. “I was already ancient when your ancestors were huddled around fires in the forest. Don’t you ever _dare_ to presume-”

“That’s _enough!”_ Dean shouted, grabbing Sam by the collar and hauling him off the angel. “He’s right, Sam. It’s not your decision to make.”

He turned his attention to Castiel.

“He does have a point, though. If you’re hurting and we can help, all you’ve gotta do is ask.”

“And be in your debt?” Castiel wrinkled his nose.

“We already saved your life once, what’s another couple life transfers between friends?”

“We’re not friends.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear,” Sam said, dusting himself off. “Are all angels assholes, or are you special?”

“We weren’t the ones-” Castiel started, then stopped short, his eyes flashing.

“Don’t antagonize him, Sam,” Dean said, rubbing his temples. “God, are you two going to be like this all day? I already feel like I need a nap.”

“I’m going back outside,” Castiel said shortly, pulling his wings high. Sam watched him go with more than a bit of satisfaction.

“We really do need to know more about him,” he said when the angel was gone. Dean sighed. He couldn’t have this conversation on an empty stomach.

“He’s a grumpy dick, but he’s not dangerous. Whatever secrets he’s keeping, they aren’t putting us in danger, so they’re not our business.”

“We’re not in danger _from him,_ ” Sam clarified, flipping the laptop open. “What about other angels? Where did he come from? And why’s his magic all broken? If we knew that, it might help us figure out what magic was used to bind him, and we could get him freed all the sooner.”

“He’s the one who’s bound, if he wants to be stuck that way, why do you care?”

Sam huffed. Before he could answer, Dean’s phone warbled. He swiped it off the counter and punched the button.

“This isn’t over,” he said to Sam, before answering with a hearty “hey, Garth.”

 

 

 

Some lady in Garden City had dug up a pair of spectacles with a tendency to burn people’s eyes out. They wanted Dean to come get the things contained, which was fine. Dean wanted Sam to stay behind and watch Castiel, which was less fine.

“You heard him, he’s like a billion years old, I think he can handle himself for two days,” Sam groused. Dean rolled his eyes and went back to burning runes into the side of the wooden containment box.

“Hey Cas, what happens if you stick a knife blade in an outlet?”

The angel blinked at him from the corner of the couch. His feathers ruffled slightly.

“Why would I do that?” the seraph asked. Dean glanced meaningfully up at Sam.

“He’s hedging because he doesn’t know. And that’s why he can’t stay here by himself.”

“So I’ve gotta stay and babysit him.” Sam frowned. “What happens if something happens to you? I’m supposed to be helping you.”

“You are helping me. By watching Cas.”

“Can’t we just take him with us?”

“Yeah, cuz you two are so much fun, I can’t _wait_ to spend two days stuck in a car with you.” Dean shook his head. “Anyway, three people means two hotel rooms and I’m not doing it. Stay here and talk to each other. Make popcorn and bond over V for Vendetta.”

“I don’t eat,” Castiel reminded him.

“See?” Dean said, grinning. “He’s easy to take care of, just make sure he’s in his jammies by eight.”

Sam could feel Dean’s easygoing humor pushing at him gently, working to dissipate the deep feelings of irritation which permeated his own…. whatever it was. Whatever Castiel was feeling, he was keeping it to himself. The angel was oddly closed off, which worked just fine for Sam.

“We don’t have a phone,” he said suddenly. “You’ve got your cell.”

“I’ll get you a burner while I’m out, so you’ll have one for next time.”

“Next time?”

Dean finished the runes and brushed the box clean.

“Yeah, Sam, next time. We don’t know how long he’s going to be here and I can’t just put everything on hold. Some people have to work for a living.”

Sam’s jaw set.

 

 

Dean left a little before noon, the sound of the car’s engine disappearing into the distance and leaving the house weirdly quiet.

It took less than an hour for Sam to realize that the angel was afraid of him.

The angel wouldn’t turn his back on Sam, shifting slightly to keep him always in sight. He moved slowly, silently, trying not to draw Sam’s attention, trying to be small. He spread his weight out onto his hands, making sure the furniture wouldn’t creak when he shifted. Sam knew all these tricks because he had used them himself, tucking silently into the corners of backseats and motel rooms when he knew John was going to take his anger out on _something_.

“You know how to work the sink. What else?”

Castiel blinked.

“What?”

Sam gestured around the main room.

“I’m not gonna be stuck on babysitting duty forever. Dean doesn’t think you can handle yourself here, so I’m gonna teach you. You know how to work the sink. What else?”

“What’s an outlet and why would I put a knife blade in one?”

Sam looked around, locating one and pointing it out.

“You plug stuff in here and the electricity powers it. If you stick a knife in there, the electricity goes through your body and you start a fire or die or something.”

Castiel crouched down, fingers tracing over the plastic cover.

“There isn’t enough energy here to kill me.”

“And hopefully a breaker would trip, first, but you get the idea.”

“Would this kill you?”

Sam eyed him carefully.

“Probably. Why?”

“Your vessels are fragile.”

“Yeah. Well. We’re only human. And electrocuting me falls under the category of things the collar won’t let you do, so you can quit that right now.”

Castiel gave him a dark look.

“I wasn’t planning to harm you.”

Sam looked away. The angel had already tackled him once today, it wasn’t like he didn’t have good reason to keep his guard up.

“If the electricity is so dangerous, why are there so many outlets?”

“We use it for a lot of stuff. The lights, the tv, the stove, the fridge… pretty much everything runs off it.”

“Why not just use magic?”

“What, to run everything? I don’t think it would work.”

“It’s just a flow of energy. It doesn’t seem that complex.”

“But it’s constant. You’d have to keep the spell running continuously. It would take a lot of energy and concentration.”

Castiel looked around.

“This constitutes ‘a lot’ for you?”

“It doesn’t for you?”

Castiel chuckled.

“I’ve done more powerful spells by accident.”

The smile dropped off his face and Sam felt that same crushing loss.

“You can get it back, right? The power you had?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Castiel said evenly. His wings spread slightly, the flight feathers flaring, and to Sam it looked like he might be about to bolt.

“Why is this such a secret? You already did a transfer with me and Dean both. If a couple more will fix you up then what’s the big deal?”

“I still have some parts of myself that are _mine,_ ” Castiel snapped. “Though I don’t expect you to know what that’s like.”

Sam wanted to be angry, to protest, but all he felt from Castiel was pain. The barb hurt, but attacking the angel back felt wrong. Like kicking him while he was down.

“Fine. Whatever. Come here, I’ll show you how to work the stove.”

“I don’t eat.”

“Yeah, you’ve said. Got anything better to do?”

Castiel raised an eyebrow.

“Off the top of my head I can think of several dozen more intellectually stimulating tasks.”

Sam gestured around the room.

“Like what?”  

 

 

Over the next few hours, Castiel got a crash course in twenty first century living. They went through the various kitchen appliances, the thermostat, the woodstove, and the DVD player. The DVD player was of interest to him, because it was the only device whose function could not be performed faster and more efficiently with magic.

Cas wouldn’t turn his back on Sam.

Sam could appreciate that.

He showed Cas how to flip a breaker and change a lightbulb and make the smoke alarm shut off. Castiel told him how remarkably unnecessary all these tasks were, but he learned them anyway.

Sam offered to cut up one of his shirts to fit around Castiel’s wings, but Cas showed a marked disinclination to let Sam anywhere near his wings, particularly with scissors. Shirts were a human invention, in any case. He was fine without one.

Socks and shoes were similarly dismissed as unnecessary, though Sam thought he might change his mind if he spent more time outside.

Around six it started to get dark. Sam checked the computer and found he had a message from Dean. After assuring the hunter that he and Castiel were both still alive, he opened his inbox and found emails from both Victor and Bela.

Bela proudly announced that she’d closed two more suits. They’d gone better than she’d hoped and the message was less a notification and more a chance to brag.

Victor had forwarded him a collection of photographs. Some were mug shots, others looked like family photos. He wanted Sam and Castiel to look over them and see if there was anyone they recognized.    

Sam opened the first photo.

It hit him in the center of the chest like a mallet, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. He’d seen the man before, twisting a silk blindfold between his fingers as another man laid out a line of shiny sterile needles. He’d been looking at Sam with a predatory grin that made Sam’s stomach drop.

He clicked the barbell absently against his teeth, remembering the man’s voice in the darkness, his breath warm on Sam’s ear as rough fingers pulled his arms back and pried his jaw open-

“Sam?”

Sam snapped back into the present, blinking.

“Yeah?”

Cas’s wings were high and wide, feathers fluffed and standing on edge. He was looking at Sam like he couldn’t decide whether to come closer or bolt.

“You were afraid,” the angel said hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Sam said, rubbing absently at his temples. “Yeah, I just remembered something. I’m fine.”

He should open the rest of the photos. He knew that. He and Cas should sit down with a notepad and start making a record of who they remembered. What had happened. Who had been there.

Sam shut the laptop.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Husband says I'm not allowed to talk about our sex life anymore. 
> 
> So, I know I promised this chapter days ago, but, I couldn't do it. I've been wrestling with this like a school paper, because I want to write it, I need to write it, but I wasn't really sure where it was going. I wasn't sure where the story was evolving. Husband helped a lot with worldbuilding back in the first couple chapters, but he begged off around chapter seven or eight. He's reading Neal Stephenson, so I don't blame him for his literary adultery. 
> 
> Anyway, yesterday I finally conceded that I needed help. I got a new dishwasher and while Husband was trapped under the sink with a wrench, I read him what I'd written, starting in chapter 20 with Dean getting called to do the wards. I skipped over the sex because I cannot read that out loud no matter how hard I try. But I got through the basement and the interactions with Sam and Castiel being an angry creature. And when I finished chapter 24 I said "where do I go?" 
> 
> And Husband came out from under the sink and told me. 
> 
> So I'm back on track. That's how this chapter got written. 
> 
> In the meantime I actually _read_ some fics in the hopes of blatantly plagiarizing someone else's brilliance (#inspiration) and I came across [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2427209?view_full_work=true) which I enjoyed on several levels. It's kind of a description of what it's like to look up from a fic and realize that the people around you are still talking and shopping and studying as though Castiel hadn't just died in the snow.


	26. Chapter 26

Castiel watched the human cautiously. Sam wasn’t doing anything overtly threatening at the moment, but as long as the spell kept Castiel bound, he was at the hunter’s mercy. And Sam knew it. And Castiel knew that Sam knew it.

It was pointless staying on guard against such a threat, keeping him always in sight and staying just out of reach. There was no point bracing for flight that the man could arrest with a word.

Humans had a knack for exploiting the absurd, Castiel had found. It wasn’t enough to cut him or beat him or rape him, they wanted him to bring them the instruments they’d use to do it. They wanted him to beg for it. They wanted him to lock the cuffs around his own wrists and spread for them. They wanted him to count off the strokes and ask for more and thank them for all of it afterward. Castiel had fought until the silver bands had glowed hot, blistering his skin. It hadn’t mattered. He’d eventually obeyed anyway, the pain of disobedience accentuating the shame and pain and fear of compliance.  

Sam knew these behaviors. He’d seen it in the other man’s mind. The sweat and skin and heat and exhaustion and pain, the obedience and the games. Sam was human, so while the physical reality of his experiences was mild, what had happened to him left him with scars too deep for Castiel to heal. He’d wiped the man’s skin clean, but his mind was fractured.

Sam didn’t need a collar to make him obey. He hadn’t fought. He’d been asked the same things as Castiel, but he’d done them willingly, even happily, eager to serve his masters. He’d learned to ask them of others, and Castiel thought maybe that was the most disturbing of all. Sam knew how to act like a master.

When Dean left, Sam had sat quietly, like he was waiting for something. Castiel couldn’t begin to fathom what. He didn’t drop his guard, as useless as it might be.

He didn’t think the man would beat him. He’d seen inside Sam and he’d seen inside Dean, and they didn’t seem like the masters Castiel had had before, the ones who liked to break his bones or watch him bleed. And they hadn’t taken his feathers, which was promising.

Castiel still couldn’t help but flinch when Sam spoke up. He was expecting a simple order, like ‘take your clothes off’ or ‘get me hard.’ That was how it usually started. There was no point in pretending Sam wasn’t interested, or Dean for that matter. Not after what he’d heard yesterday.

Instead, Sam told him about electricity, and climate control, and microwaves and refrigerators and light bulbs and bathtubs and shoes and couches and garbage disposals and dishwashers and fire extinguishers and Castiel began to understand.

Even in his ridiculously limited corporeal form, Castiel could stand stationary long enough for stone to erode without getting hungry or cold or even uncomfortable.

Humans, he realized, had to manipulate their environment in a hundred tiny little ways every minute just to keep themselves alive. No wonder they’d never learned to do proper magic. No wonder they felt the need to keep beings like Castiel under such rigid control. He’d go insane too, if he were like them, floating through life as fragile as a soap bubble, cowering at any stray breeze threatening to blow them off course.

Castiel contemplated this while Sam checked the computer. The machine was a way for humans to communicate, Castiel knew that much. Humans couldn’t sense each other, couldn’t talk to each other across distances except by sending their voices as electronic signals or transferring written messages. It was so limited, so confining, that Castiel felt a sudden crushing sense of loneliness on their behalf, suddenly grateful for-

He clenched his eyes shut, cutting off the line of thought. No sense thinking about it now.

The feeling wouldn’t subside and Castiel shoved at it, pushing it down, willing it to disappear. It built inside him, an acid-sour ball of fear that grew and grew until he realized it wasn’t coming from him.

It was coming from Sam.

_What was he afraid of?_

“Sam?”

The man started, breaking his gaze away from the laptop and looking at Castiel. The feeling subsided somewhat and Castiel wondered if it had been a good idea to attract his attention.

Sam had been remembering.

It didn’t make sense. Sam viewed his time in captivity with pride. Strength. During the bond yesterday, Castiel hadn’t seen the all-encompassing fear that Sam had been feeling a few moments ago. So where did it come from?

Castiel probed gently at the dwindling fear, and just like before, Sam’s mind scrabbled against the bond, circling it and crashing against it like a child. You would never know the man hated him, for all his mind clung to Castiel’s.

“You’re proud of your slavery. Why does it frighten you?”

Sam’s look was sharp.

“You should know. You were there.”

“I fought them,” Castiel said, tipping his head. “As hard as I could. Every day. But you sought to please them, and were proud when you did.”

“I could work through the pain. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

“Why would you want to please people who hurt you?”

“What’s with the twenty questions all of a sudden? Don’t pretend you care.”

Castiel shrugged.

“You’re very complex little creatures. You have such complex minds, like you’re trying to fit a whole lifetime of thought into your tiny little lifespans. There are contradictions. It’s…. interesting.”

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said drily, and Cas wondered if he had made a mistake. “Speaking of our tiny little lifespans, how long until we can do another transfer?”

Castiel scowled. Sam set the laptop aside.

“Don’t be like that. You need it, right? And I’m offering.”

The collar sparked. Right. Because it was pointless to argue against Sam. If he wanted Castiel to make a connection then Castiel would eventually have to and Sam would be there, penetrating into his core and there would be nothing he could do to-

“Figure of speech,” Sam amended. “Be like that if you want. But I’d like it if you would accept my help.”

“Don’t pretend _you_ care,” Castiel snapped. “You don’t want me here and you don’t trust me.”

Sam nodded.

“True. But the sooner you’re healthy, the sooner you can fuck off back to being grouchy wherever the hell it is you came from.”

Castiel couldn’t keep it back this time, and he could _see_ the reaction as the wave of loss spilled out of him and into Sam. Sam gasped, almost losing his breath.

“Holy _shit,_ ” the hunter muttered. “What did I _say_?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sam paused, frowning, and Castiel could feel him pawing at the bond. He shoved back against the man’s mind, pushing him away.

“Stop it!”

Sam just looked confused.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Leave the bond alone.”

“I didn’t do anything! You’re the one sending tsunamis of grief at me.”

Grief. Was that what it was? Castiel supposed it was as good a term as any. Sam was nudging at him again, pressed against the bond in a way he wasn’t used to, but at least the hunter wasn’t picking at it any more.

“I don’t want to be here either,” Castiel said. His voice was low. He wasn’t sure the human could even hear him. He brought one hand up, twisting at the silver bangle wrapped around his wrist. “Believe me.”

“So let me help you.”

The collar flashed and Castiel heard Sam swear. He grit his teeth, resisting the magic seizing through his body.

“ _Figure of speech!_ ” Sam shouted, and the collar dropped its assault. “Fuck, that thing is a pain in the ass.”

“So quit playing with it! Give me the damn order and get it over with!”

Castiel was shaking, ready to fight the onslaught when it came. It was pointless, he’d never been able to hold off for long, but he was going to try. He met Sam’s gaze, clenching his jaw, daring the human to make his move.

“It was an accident. I won’t make you open a bond.”

“ _Again,_ ” Castiel spat. Sam nodded

“Fair enough. If you want to sit over there feeling sorry for yourself because you’re burned out and won’t ask for help, fine. But you get no sympathy from me.”

“I didn’t ask for your sympathy.”

Sam groaned, rolling his eyes.

“Why are you like this?”

“Because I wasn’t raised in captivity and have goals beyond the immediate desire to please the being in closest proximity. You should take notes.”

He shouldn’t be antagonizing Sam. The hunter could hurt him, badly. In a way, Castiel was almost beginning to hope he would. That Sam would finally do whatever it was he was going to do, and let him stop wondering. Cas had been shot and stabbed and burned and a dozen other things. He could take it, and at least if it were happening he could stop walking on eggshells and _fight._

Sam was looking at him quizzically, a furrow between his brows.

“What is that? Is that you? What are you doing?”

Castiel realized he’d been shoring up the bond, protecting against an attack the human wasn’t even close to being able to mount. He let the defenses collapse.

Something edged in from the side, questioning and hesitant.

“Dean?” Sam asked, his eyes widening. Castiel sighed, rubbing his eyes, and sent the absent hunter a reassurance.

“Is that Dean?” Sam asked again, this time addressing Castiel.

“Yes. I suppose this must be very confusing for him, lacking context.”

“It’s confusing for me _with_ context. What was that?”

“Nothing. Leave it alone.”

“Bullshit. You’re telling me that you can do stuff to my head from _across the state?_ ”

“Across the universe, probably.”

Sam blinked. Castiel could feel him pawing at the bond again. The man was concentrating, a little furrow growing between his eyebrows. Castiel felt him nudging into the bond, more directed, persistent, and then very clearly Castiel felt _what is this?_

_Back off!_ Castiel sent back, and Sam twitched.

“That’s you,” he breathed. “That thing I can feel. It’s you. And Dean?”

“You might not be able to feel him since you’re both human and your minds are weak.”

“How would I know? What’s you and what’s him?”

Castiel tried not to be offended.

“If you could feel him, it would be obvious that he was different from me.”

“So what were you doing before? It felt like someone was stuffing a wet towel in my ear. Were you trying to get into my mind?”

Castiel scoffed.

“There’s nothing in your mind that’s of interest to me.”

“So what was it.”

“I was… shoring up a defense. Not that you’d be able to mount an attack, it’s just a reflex.”

“You expect me to attack you?”

Castiel blinked. He laid his hand across the scar on his chest.

“You marked me and you’ve shown a marked interest in giving me orders. Of course I’m expecting an attack.” Castiel’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve known men who enjoy the anticipation, but you don’t seem like one of them. It concerns me that you’re waiting.”

Sam’s hands tightened.

“I marked you to help Dean. And I’ve been giving you orders to help you. It saved your life, remember?”

“I would rather _die_ than force a bond on someone who didn’t want it,” Castiel growled. “It wasn’t your place to give me that order, and you have no comprehension of what you’ve done. What you feel as a ‘wet towel’ I feel as a river of distrust and anger and resentment flowing into my head _constantly_ so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t subscribe to your ‘for your own good’ _bullshit._ ”

Sam had nothing to say to that. He dropped his eyes, studying the white lines on the floor. Castiel glared at him, daring him to defend himself.

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. You’re drowning in a sea of things you don’t know and that’s why you don’t get to _give me orders._ ”

“Is there a way to stop it? Undo the bond so you can’t feel me anymore?”

Castiel shook his head.

“And every transfer makes it stronger.”

Sam still wouldn’t look at him, but he nodded.

“I’m not going to attack you. I don’t… this is all weird for me, you know?” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face only to have it fall back a moment later. “Honestly I shouldn’t even be making decisions for myself. So it stands to reason that I’d fuck up, making them for you.”

Castiel nodded. Sam was pressing into the bond again, grasping at it and holding tight, like he was trying to kink a garden hose.

“It won’t help,” Castiel said shortly. Sam looked up.

“What?”

“That thing you’re doing. It won’t help.”

“I didn’t realize I was doing anything.”

Castiel sighed. This wasn’t going to work. He crossed to the center of the circle, settling cross-legged to the floor.

“Come here.”

Sam stared at him a moment and then obeyed, folding himself awkwardly into the same cross-legged position.

“Put your hands like this,” Castiel said, laying his palms over his knees. The silver bangles scratched on the denim when he moved.

It was a little disconcerting, being this close to Sam. Mentally he was an open book- Castiel could slip into his mind and read every thought he’d ever had, as easily as he could hear the man speak. Sam wasn’t like the other humans Castiel had met, didn’t want the things they wanted. But sitting here, almost close enough to touch, it wasn’t hard to imagine Sam leaning forward. He was bigger than Castiel, stronger, he’d have no trouble pinning the angel to the floor. Sam would murmur in his ear, and the collar would burn, and eventually Castiel would do what he was told-

Sam pushed at the bond and Castiel recoiled, wings flaring as he tried to recover his balance.

“What were you thinking about?” Sam asked, but Castiel just shook his head.

“Palms on your knees,” he said. “Straighten your arms a little more- put your shoulders back.”

Sam did as he was told, mimicking the angel’s pose.

“Good. Now you need to breathe slowly. Use your diaphragm, not your chest. Do you feel it?”

Sam took a couple slow breaths.

“No. What am I supposed to feel?”

“The bond. You’ve been worrying at it since it was formed. You can feel it, you just can’t recognize it. Keep breathing.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s metaphysical. It doesn’t have a location.”

“Where do you feel it?”

Castiel paused, circling the edges of the connection, trying to connect them to a place on his body. After a moment he raised his hand, letting his fingers rest just above his breastbone.

“Here, I suppose.”

“Okay.”

Sam closed his eyes, drawing slow breaths in through his nose. The pose he held was unnaturally still, and Castiel’s mind went back to the memories of Sam’s training.

“The pose is supposed to center your energy. You don’t have to be a statue for it to work.”

Sam nodded, his eyes still closed. He didn’t relax. But he didn’t give up.

Outside, the sun went down and the darkness around the house deepened. Sam didn’t move. Castiel sighed. It wasn’t working.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he said “and lean forward.”

Sam did as he was told, his eyebrows furrowed and his jaw tight. Castiel extended his wings, arching them up and around the two of them. At the same time he leaned forward, his forehead pressing lightly against Sam’s. He closed his eyes, kicked himself for making such a terrible decision, and reached out through the bond.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No soundtrack to this chapter. I wrote most of it at work, so, no music. Do you guys like the music? I can stop. 
> 
> Also... this might be the last chapter I ever write. Today there was an episode of Big Bang Theory about fanfiction and after it was over, Husband read the entirety of [Nurse Rached](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6391108) out loud to me. I've never been so mortified in my whole life. It's so bad. It's SO BAD. I can't, I just... ugh, I'm freaking out just thinking about it. I feel like if someone made a podfic of any of my stories I would listen for like two minutes and then just hurl myself into the sun. 
> 
> _"His skin was salty, sweet undertones of fear accentuating the hunter’s taste."_
> 
> Fuck that's tacky, I think, staring at my dinner and praying for this moment to end. 
> 
> _"The lube was cold and sticky on her fingers as she delved into the cleft of Sam’s ass."_
> 
>  
> 
> [_Incoherent screaming._](http://i.imgur.com/qaAoTQf.gif)
> 
>  
> 
> Oh also last time I promised to tell you about my cats. 
> 
> [I uploaded pictures.](http://imgur.com/a/lr0jf) This album has some mild nudity in it. I had fourteen cats for a while because I was using unemployment as an opportunity to do some community outreach. I was home a lot. I don't wear pants at home. Cope.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [Ten Thousand Miles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kieyW-FKyQ) by Mary Chapin Carpenter. This song, when combined with the [fic of the same name](http://mimblexwimble.livejournal.com/54645.html) will *ruin your life.* She says there's no moral at the end. She means there's no END at the end and oh god I'm ugly sobbing again.

Castiel brushed against Sam’s side of the bond, pressing just hard enough for the hunter to feel. Sam’s eyes flew open.

“Oh,” he said softly.

And then he was attacking it, launching himself at the bond and clambering all over it, looking for a way in.

Castiel scrambled back, slamming the bond as tight as he could, his wings splaying wide as he scrambled across the floor.

“What? What?” Sam asked, his eyes wide as he watched the angel. “What did I do?”

Even as he said it, he was still circling his side, sending little jabs at the link.

“I felt it,” Sam said. “Whatever you did. I felt it. I could feel you. I think…”

The assault on the bond renewed and Castiel hissed, drawing his wings around himself.

“That’s you,” Sam breathed, staring at the angel. Castiel kicked himself. He should have known this would end badly.

“Is it hurting you?” Sam asked. “Whatever I’m doing, does it hurt?”

Castiel paused. How to describe-?

“No,” he said after a moment. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s just… invasive.”

“I’m not trying to,” Sam said, and Castiel nodded.

“You don’t know how to control yourself. It’s to be expected.”

Sam narrowed his eyes.

“I can control myself just fine. I just have to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be controlling.”

Castiel rolled his eyes.

“You think that holding still is the same as self-control.” Castiel made a dismissive gesture. “Your mind is like a child’s, running here and there and latching onto anything new and shiny.”

“So then teach me how to control it.”

Castiel paused.

“I don’t think you can learn.”

Sam laughed at that.

“Only one way to know for sure, right? You have to show me what I’m doing. Or what I should be doing.”

Castiel frowned.

“The bond is like...” he floundered uselessly. “It cannot exist as a physical object. It is a passageway and an entity at the same time. On your side, it is a point containing all of me, and on my side, it is a point containing all of you. We contain each other. Do you understand?”

Sam gave him a blank look. Castiel sighed. Very slowly, he moved back into position across from Sam, settling into the same cross-legged position he had held earlier. He held his wings back, suddenly unwilling to put them within Sam’s reach. Sam leaned forward, like he had before, and Castiel flinched back.

“Sorry,” Sam said, retreating.

“No. You- it’s difficult being this close to one of you. You’re very… present.”

He didn’t know how else to explain it. Even when Sam was sitting still, he was in constant motion. His muscles were perpetually tensing and adjusting, keeping his blood flowing and his temperature even. Even the soft meditative breathing kept his whole body thrumming with energy.

When Castiel held still, his body was solid as marble and even a bloodhound could pass within five feet without detecting his presence. But humans, humans seemed to be always in the process of dissolving into their environments. From this close it was impossible to miss the heat and the scent and the motion of the man across from him and it set Castiel on edge.

He’d felt breath on his skin, hot and sticky. The steady beat of a pulse when hands tightened on his throat. Flushed skin riding against him, slippery with sweat.

It was difficult being near them.

Castiel forced himself to calm, to ignore the shiver up his back. He relaxed his wings, letting them settle naturally behind him. Sam was pressing at the bond again, _always,_ and Castiel focused on the task at hand.

  
“Put your hands back,” he instructed, nodding when Sam mirrored his pose. “I’m going to try to reach out again. When you feel it, try to leave it alone, understand? You try not to attack it and I’ll try to withstand your pawing and maybe we can find some middle ground.”

“I’m pawing at it?”

“With some enthusiasm.”

Sam frowned slightly. “I didn’t know I was doing that.”

“I know.”

“What does it feel like?”

Castiel sighed.

“There is no way to describe it to you.”

“Can you do it back to me? So I could feel?”

“No. You have no natural defenses and certainly none strong enough to withstand one of my kind. It’s hard enough not to kill you as it is.”

Sam stilled slightly at that. Castiel spread his wings out, very slowly encircling the two of them.

“Close your eyes, and lean forward,” Castiel instructed, and pressed into the bond.

In an instant Sam was clamoring all over him again. Castiel grit his teeth, trying his damndest to ignore the feeling. The human was probing at him, encircling him, pressing and pulling and exploring.

Sam appeared to him as a bright, burnished copper color, and he knew that if he could see himself, he’d have wide threads of it running through his own blue. Sam’s life was stitching him together, it shouldn’t be so uncomfortable to feel him just _being_ there.

None of the others had been here. Castiel had always been alone in his own mind, even when there was too much pain to retreat fully. He’d always had this one little place where he could be _away_ from them, for all the good it did him.

Waves of anger crashed over the orange light, swamping it, and Castiel pulled back quickly, breaking the bond.

Sam was staring at him.

“You _hate_ me.”

“Just returning the favor,” Castiel snapped. Even now, Sam wouldn’t leave him alone. He could still feel the human there, slotted up tight against the edges of his mind.

“No, I think you’re an asshole and I resent you for what you did to Dean, but you… you…”

Sam didn’t have words. Good.

“So now you know,” Castiel said. “You’ve watched your brothers take every inch of me but one, and now that last inch is yours.”

“You would have _died,_ ” Sam growled, and Castiel realized the human had the nerve to feel _indignant._ Then the man’s shoulders slumped, and he looked down. “I did the best I could with what I had,” he said quietly.

And finally, he withdrew from the bond.

“There,” Castiel said. “That’s what it feels like when you’re not scrabbling at it.”

Sam smiled a little, still looking down.

“It feels like being alone,” he said.

“That’s because you are.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah, I know.”

A moment later he was there again. Not as frantic, not as desperate, just… there. Like he was sitting with his back to the door between them. Castiel sighed.

“I’m doing it again, aren’t I.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Is Dean doing the same thing?”

“No.”

“Figures.”

Castiel reached out for the absent hunter, coming back with nothing but some muddled memories.

“He’s sleeping.”

“You can tell that?”

“Yes. Like I can tell that you’re upset.”

Sam snorted.

“Yeah. Upset. That’s what I am. Okay.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Okay,” he said again. “I can learn this. I can. I fucked up and now you’re stuck with me and I’m sorry. I can’t fix it. But I can learn not to make it worse.”

The words were paradoxically coupled with an increased pressure from the bond.

“Leave it alone,” Cas said. He was suddenly very tired. He just wanted to be left alone.

“One more time. Let me try again.”

The collar sparked and Sam pressed harder and Castiel gave up.

He threw the bond open and Sam toppled through. He wanted in so badly? Fine. Let him look. Let him see the _immensity_ of what he was up against. Castiel pushed the pain and the fear and the hate at the hunter, feeling the collar burn as he did, but he didn’t care. Sam choked, clutching at his head as the angel poured into him.

“ _Stop_ ,” he gasped weakly, and Castiel didn’t bother trying to fight the order. He slammed the bond shut again-

-and froze when he realized he couldn’t shut it completely.

Flickers of copper were seeping through, bright and strong.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know!” Sam yelped. His eyes were wide, staring at Castiel from somewhere far away. Castiel scrambled back but it didn’t matter. The bond could reach him from across the universe.

The specks were becoming a stream, leaking slowly through the bond and creeping toward him.

“Close it! Close it off!”

“I can’t!”

The copper light reached him and fractured. It wasn’t like Dean’s, which had encircled him like a ribbon, holding the parts together. Sam wasn’t pushing the pieces of Castiel back together. He was seeping into the cracks, filling the empty places inside the broken angel.

Castiel couldn’t breathe.

He had memories that weren’t his.

They could have been his.

People grabbing him. Hurting him. Some of the faces looked familiar.

The images dimmed, taking on a faint orange glow.

_Don’t._

_Cas, there’s so much more._

Castiel shook his head. He shoved at Sam, twisting away, but the copper wisps reformed. He was trying to fight smoke.

An apple. He could taste an apple. Tart and crisp. A man smiled down at him.

_I don’t eat._

A girl looked at him across a classroom. When she saw him looking, she blushed and ducked her head. There was silver in her smile. His stomach twisted.

_Stop it._

Cold and wet. Outside the car, it was raining. The stranger in the front seat turned the heat up.

The copper was worming it’s way through him.

A girl in a park watched her balloon float into the sky.

Two men shared a cigarette in an alley.

A woman kissed him goodbye.

_Sam!_

The bond slammed shut and the two of them were back in Dean’s living room, staring at each other.

“Is it over?” Sam asked cautiously.

Castiel didn’t answer. There were a hundred moments in his head, fitting into patterns and associations he didn’t begin to know how to categorize. He had more of Sam’s life in him now, he could feel it.

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t even know what I did!”

“Another transfer,” Cas said slowly. He wasn’t as angry as he felt like he should be. He was searching through the memories, looking for faces he knew. Looking for experiences he knew. Looking for feelings he knew.

Nothing.

Castiel regarded the man in front of him. Opening the bond that wide should have left Sam a terrified mess. He’d looked better, but he wasn’t traumatized. Not like he should have been, after seeing what he had.

“I think I know where it is now. I can feel it.” Sam laid his hand on his stomach, above his belly button. “It’s here, for me. I was looking higher, where you said yours was, but mine… I think it’s here. I’ll try to leave it alone.”

Sure enough, the bond was quiet.

“I heard singing,” Sam said. Castiel looked up sharply. “Just like, a massive group of people singing.”

Castiel’s throat tightened. His brothers and sisters. Sam had heard them. He’d shoved all his resentment and anger at the man, and Sam had heard their song instead.

“Is that what the bond should be like?” Sam asked. “All the time?”

“Yes,” Castiel said shortly. It seemed suddenly very quiet. The harmonies were long gone now. All he had left was Sam’s hesitant scuffling and Dean’s distant sleeping mind.

Sam opened his mouth, like he might say something, but then he stopped. His eyes lost focus and Castiel remembered the effect that the transfers had previously had on the humans. He caught Sam just as the man began to topple forward.

Sam’s body didn’t feel nearly as heavy as it should.

After more than a year of captivity and starvation, Castiel was getting stronger.

He was still a long way from being able to _lift_ Sam, but he could lay him out on the floor so he didn’t fall over and hurt himself.

Castiel tried to do it quickly, touching the man as little as possible. He was vaguely aware that human bodies got uncomfortable if they were compressed in certain ways, but since the stress positions had never worked on him, he hadn’t paid much attention.

In any case, it would only be twenty minutes.

They couldn’t be so fragile that they could injure themselves in only twenty minutes.

Probably.

Castiel felt a twinge of guilt and shoved it away. He hadn’t asked for the transfer. Sam had done that on his own. So what if it was an accident. Even if it wasn’t Sam’s fault, it wasn’t Castiel’s fault, either.

Castiel glanced over Sam’s prone form. He looked fine. He was still breathing, and that’s the most important thing about human physiology, he was pretty sure.

Castiel fetched a blanket off the couch and laid it over the sleeping man. It only came up to mid-chest, but that was probably fine. He wasn’t sure what the blanket was for, but he knew that humans slept under them, and Sam was sleeping, so. It followed. Logically.

Castiel rolled his eyes at the empty room, and settled in to wait.

 

  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck yeah metaphysics! 
> 
> This all makes perfect sense in my head. I'm hoping it didn't get too weird and abstract and completely fail to make any sense at all. I got about 3/4 of the way through it last night and then realized I was passing out while I was writing. (Fun!) So I had to go over it this morning and fix some things. 
> 
> Thank you to all ya'll who told me not to stop writing- I'm not going to, not really. This fic will have an ending, barring some seriously serious shit on my side. I promise you this. I won't leave you hanging. Not that I've been watching obsessively or anything, but after the last chapter, the kudo-count on this story topped 661, which means it's in the top 1% for AO3 fics. Like Sam, my validation process is completely external, which means that finishing this fic is now my Purpose In Life. 
> 
> Oh also: I'm going to Columbus again this weekend. I just realized my flight leaves this afternoon. I'm gonna go to a bridal shower for my sister. Availability of next chapter depends on how much time I spend in LGA. Those of you familiar with LGA know that it ranges from 'fifteen minutes' to 'two days' depending on the weather and how much God hates you.


	28. The April Fool's chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack to this chapter is [Hot Blooded](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) by Queen.

Time didn’t pass for angels the same way it passed for people.

Still, Castiel was pretty sure that four hours differed significantly from twenty minutes, particularly when it came to unconsciousness.

Castiel reached out through the bond, trying to feel for Sam’s psyche.

The human was still breathing, slow and shallow, which he thought was probably normal for a sleeping human. He wished he had paid more attention, but it was too late now.

Anyway, as long as Sam’s chest kept rising and falling, it meant the human was alive. Everything else was secondary, Castiel was pretty sure.

Sam’s mind was buzzing. Faded, half-formed thoughts were flying past too fast to make any sense. It wasn’t like the molasses flow of thoughts he’d gotten from Dean’s sleeping mind. This felt more like the human’s synapses were firing at random, too many, too fast. They weren’t connected to each other in any way Castiel could determine.

Somewhere on the far side of the state, Dean was waking up.

 

By two AM, Dean had accepted that there was nothing in his small, unlabeled pharmacy that was going to make the headache any better. His vision wasn’t blurring, though, and that meant he could drive.

He popped a couple no-doze and started packing.  

Christ, his head hurt.

He could feel every heartbeat pressing against the inside of his skull, against the back of his eyes. He felt like he could trace the exact paths of his blood vessels through his brain.

 

 

Castiel wondered if maybe he should try to wake the hunter up. Sam looked like h was waking, limbs twitching suddenly and his breath coming erratically and sometimes stopping altogether.

He lay his hands on the human’s chest, shaking gently.

“Sam.”

Sam didn’t react, but his body was tense under Castiel’s touch. The muscles of his chest and abdomen twitched erratically, his hands tightening into fists and his jaw clenching. For the first time, Castiel realized how attractive he was.

“Sam,” he said again. There was something wrong with the man, Castiel was almost sure of it now. He probed at the bond, trying to find some sign of what was wrong or what he should do about it.

Sam’s mind was little more than white noise. Very rarely Castiel caught a glimpse of a memory or an emotion, but it was gone before it could solidify into anything useful.

He laid his hands against Sam’s temples, sending a tiny pulse of healing energy into the man’s skin. If there was anything physically wrong with him, the energy should find it and help fix it.

Sam collapsed bonelessly, gasping deep.

 

Lightning spiked through Dean’s head and he gasped, almost veering off the road.

“What the fuck?”

Two hours from home. He had two hours to go. He could make it.

He straightened the wheel and pressed a little harder on the gas.

He thought maybe he should go to a hospital. The pain in his head was almost certainly supernatural in origin, but it was always possible he was having a stroke, or a heart attack, or a brain tumor, or something.

He didn’t think so. It was Sam. Sam and Cas. He was sure of it. Something deep inside his aching head told him that this was something to do with the angel’s bond, and if he could get home, it would all be okay.

 

This shouldn’t be possible, Castiel realized.

This was a myth.

Nephilim weren’t supposed to exist.

But he couldn’t deny that Sam was changing.

His mind had settled into the low hum of normal sleep, but he still wouldn’t wake up. Castiel realized that was probably for the best. It might be easier for him if he weren’t awake for this.

The bond still wouldn’t close all the way. Copper light was seeping through with some regularity now, and Castiel knew that his own blue-white was making the journey the other way, as well. It probably wouldn’t ever stop, now.

Sam’s life force had hardened inside him, solidified within the cracks and made him whole again. He wouldn’t be able to extricate it, ever. Not without dying.

But every action has a reaction, and Sam was paying the price for that now.

The energy he had expended was being replaced by Castiel’s own power, soaking through him and permeating through every cell.

Castiel’s body looked human, but he wasn’t a man. He couldn’t bond this strongly with a human, not if the human wanted to stay human.

What Sam was becoming now was halfway between a human and an angel. At a cellular level, he was changing into something that wasn’t quite either.

A nephilim.

Half human, half angel, and now, bonded to Castiel forever.

Castiel licked his lips.

This might be a good thing.

He was cut off from his people, the last of his kind. Their songs were silenced forever, but that didn’t mean Castiel had to sing solo. Not forever.

He pulled the blanket slowly down Sam’s body, pushing his shirt up to reveal his bare midriff.

It was a legend. A myth.

Nephilim didn’t exist.

But if they did exist.

According to legend.

They could bear young.

Castiel pressed his lips to Sam’s skin, and when he looked up, Sam was looking down at him. The hunter’s hazel eyes sparkled, wide with confusion.

“What are you-” Sam said. His voice was high, breathy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Castiel said, his eyes raking over Sam’s changing body. “You’re part angel now, and we’re bonded. You’re my mate.”

“Really?” Sam asked in confusion. Castiel’s blue eyes were staring into his soul and he realized everything the angel was saying was true.

“I love you so much,” Castiel said, before kissing him hard. “I want you to carry my young. I want to put so many angel babies inside you.”

“Okay,” Sam said weakly. He’d never thought this was possible, but as soon as Castiel said it, he realized he’d never wanted anything more in his life. “Please, Cas, breed me.”

 

 

About forty minutes outside Lebanon, the headache suddenly vanished. Dean wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he was relieved to be free of the pain.

By the time he got home, he was actually feeling pretty good.

It got better when he got inside and smelled the delicious smell of baking pie.

“Who taught you how to make pie?” Dean asked, taking a seat at the table and looking to where Sam was standing. The man was wearing a frilly apron and when he turned toward Dean, his lips were pink and swollen from kissing.

“I thought we had a thing,” Dean said sadly.

“We do,” Castiel said, coming up behind Dean and laying his hands on his leather jacket clad shoulders. “Sam and I want to be with you. We want you to help us raise our babies.”

“Okay,” Dean said, “but only if we take the time to defile every flat surface in this house.”

Sam smiled lustily.

“Okay,” he said.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... April fools. 
> 
> :D
> 
> The REAL next chapter is half written. I wrote it at 30,000 feet and it has almost nothing in common with this chapter. This chapter is going to be marked as fake when I post the real chapter.


	29. The really real chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 28 was an April fool's joke. This picks up where chapter 27 left off.

Dean got a call from Victor at six am. Normally it would have woken him up and pissed him off royally, but in this case, it was actually somewhat of a relief to hear a familiar voice.

“Hey Vic. What’s up?”

“You sound like shit,” the detective informed him.

It made sense. He’d been sleeping in twenty minute bursts all night, jerking awake from fever dreams of fireworks and Gregorian choirs and faceless horrors and who knew what the fuck else. Back at the house, Sam and Cas were either fighting to the death or doing some really fantastic drugs.

He hoped it was something the two of them were doing. Otherwise he’d run afoul of a particularly nasty curse, or possibly a witch. That or he was going crazy.

“So did something happen or are you calling just to flirt?”

“That’s what I’m calling to ask you. Did Sam get those photos I sent him?”

“I don’t know. I’m out on a case.”

“Another one?”

“Yeah, Victor, another one.”

“You know there’s a feral angel in your custody, right?”

“No rest for the wicked,” Dean grumbled. He rolled out of bed and checked over the hex box he’d finished the night before.

“There’s something else.”

“Oh good, do share.”

Victor paused. Dean turned the box over, checking all six sides. No charring, that was good.

“The guys we picked up at the manor. They’ve made bail.”

“How many of them?”

“All of them. We’ve been fielding calls from lawyers all morning. Milford’s even worse. I’ve got a stack of complaint forms longer than my-”

“So a bunch of rich bastards didn’t like getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. So what? You’ve got a solid case.”

“Well, no I don’t.”

Dean set the box gently back onto the table.

“Run that by me again?”

“The case is solid,” Victor said quickly. “But the facility we busted was just another domino in the chain. They’ve linked it to some outfit that got taken down in Oklahoma last month. There’s evidence of another one in New Orleans, and they’re connecting it to investigations in Ohio, South Carolina, and Vermont.”

“Really? _Vermont?_ ”

“Turns out our wealthy sadists are snowbirds.” Victor sighed. “Whatever’s going on here, it’s happening across the country. The feds have picked it up, it’s their case now. You’ll probably be getting a phone call from them once the sun’s up. I just thought it might sound better coming from me.”

“So this place in Oklahoma; they have an angel?”

“No. As far as we can tell, Castiel is the only seraph anyone’s found. Anywhere.” Victor cleared his throat. “About that. The seraph… he’s a creature, Dean. Obviously high functioning, but still a creature. It’s going to make his status complicated.”

“I’ll keep you appraised of any berserker rages or homicidal tendencies.”

“I’m serious, Dean.”

“Me too. I know it’ll take time to convince you, but in the meantime, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Cas is solid. And I don’t think we’ll need to spend too much time figuring out what he is. Once he’s unbound I get the feeling he’s going to flicker back to wherever he came from and we’ll never see him again.”

“In the meantime, keep an eye out. Attempted murder invalidates claims of ownership, but these guys have a lot of resources and at least half of them are psychopaths.”

“I saw the basement, too. Speaking of which, wasn’t there some mention of a consultation fee?”

“Check’s in the mail,” Victor said, and hung up.  

 

The mental fireworks weren’t as bad now that Dean was awake. He got almost all the way through a shower before a feeling of intense panic struck him and he tore the curtain while lunging for the knife by the sink.

The hotel room was empty.

Twice during breakfast he was hit with a vague sense of loss, followed by another, weaker burst of panic.

Around eight, he started to feel a low, simmering feeling of accomplishment and confidence. It was good, and what was more, it wasn’t fading. It wasn’t getting stronger, but it wasn’t going away, either. He actually found himself whistling as he checked the hex box over again.

He winked at the clerk when he dropped his key off. The purr of the Impala was particularly beautiful. The sun was shining, and life was good.

He checked back at the house where he’d found the cursed glasses. No further disturbances. He left them his number, collected his fee, and cruised around town for a couple hours to make sure there was nothing he’d missed.

At noon, after four hours without an unexpected jolt of emotion, he decided it was safe to drive home.  

He hoped Sam and Cas hadn’t broken too much furniture. Actually, he hoped they hadn’t broken _any_ furniture but if there’s one thing John Winchester had taught his son, it’s to let go of unrealistic expectations.

 

It turns out he needn’t have worried.

Dean paused in the doorway, taking in the state of his living room with more than a passing curiosity.

Cas stared back at him, sullen and more than a little defiant. He and Sam were sitting across from each other, cross-legged, knees almost close enough to touch.

“Do I want to know?”

Sam wriggled, raising his face toward Dean. He couldn’t do more than that with Cas still holding his knees down. His arms were pinioned behind his back, held in place with what Dean assumed were handcuffs.

“I see you two made up, then,” Dean remarked, dropping his duffel and kicking his shoes off. Cas scowled, retrieving the small silver keys from their place on the floor.

“He’s very large,” the angel said defensively, and Dean tried valiantly not to comment. Sam mumbled, pulling impatiently against the handcuffs Cas was attempting to unlock.

“Settle!” the angel barked. Sam held still until the cuffs clinked to the floor, then reached up to untie the t-shirt wrapped around his face. He blinked in the light.

“Castiel and I are working on the bond.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see that,” Dean said, searching the fridge for cold cuts. “I don’t judge, you keep doing you.”

That vague sense of accomplishment and satisfaction was eking away, being replaced by a feeling of mild annoyance. Dean switched tactics.

“So I never finished the Kama Sutra, but that’s not something I’ve seen before. What’s the game plan?”

Cas blinked at him. Sam rolled his eyes.

“We couldn’t get a solid connection established. Cas kept getting spooked and dropping out.”

“I had legitimate concerns,” the angel pointed out. He’d backed toward the hallway and Dean realized he was trying to keep both humans in his line of sight. “The bond is supposed to be a partnership. Sam has every advantage over me, because of the collar and in terms of brute strength. He does not have the ability to control his mind and I don’t have the power to force him.”

Sam’s face flushed, not meeting Dean’s eyes.

“I did another transfer,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know I was doing it and Cas couldn’t stop me.”

“How long ago was that?” Dean asked.

“Last night.”

“And you guys have been playing with it ever since then?”

The two of them exchanged glances, then nodded.

“Sam was rendered unconscious on several occasions, which slowed our progress somewhat.”

“Yeah, I’ve had nights like that,” Dean quipped through a mouthful of sandwich.

“I’m getting better, now,” Sam carried on, ignoring the joke. “I can close the bond from my side and I _think…_ ” He paused. “I think I can feel the difference between you and Cas.”

“I’m taller,” Dean said. “And he’s got wings. That should help.”

Sam frowned at him, wrinkling his forehead, and suddenly Dean felt some kind of jab. Right in the groin.

“Fuck, what was that?”

“I tried to open the link between us, but it didn’t work.”

“You’re trying too hard,” Cas supplied. “You’re trying to force it open instead of letting it happen naturally. Try again.”

“Look, Cas, not that I don’t want Sam having a direct link to my dick, but-”

Two things happened at once. Dean’s phone rang, probably the FBI agent Victor had warned them about, and the front window shattered. The projectile thumped to the floor and rolled, a brick or rock, by the looks of it. What really had Dean worried, though, was the hex bag stuck to it. It was crackling lightly and leaking black smoke.

“Down!” he shouted, and then a flash of white obscured everything.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm procrastinating on this story but the good news is, I'm procrastinating with sexy spnkink_meme fills. I'm finding myself a little surprised by the things that catch my eye. Like I just did one where Dean gets pinned down by a couple dozen tiny fairies and subjected to a frankly exhausting number of forced orgasms. Then I wrote a story about Castiel stuck in a jar and some Wincestiel fluff.  
> These things weren't included on my list of kinks before I wrote the stories. Some of them still aren't really my jam, but I think I did alright with the story anyway. Husband thinks it's incredible that I can write porn for kinks that aren't mine. For me, though, it makes perfect sense. Some of you ladies can probably relate: I learned about sex from the American public school system, where we learned that sex is something that men want and women eventually give them, once there's an emotional connection. Culturally, I learned that girlfriends/wives all fall on a spectrum somewhere between 'frigid' and 'awesome.'  
> When I first learned about oral and anal sex, I thought "ew, gross, I'm never doing that." But then I learned that that attitude put me on the 'frigid' end of the spectrum, and I wanted to be closer to 'awesome' so I just accepted that having sex meant doing things you found distasteful or uncomfortable. I completely internalized this teaching at the age of maybe thirteen.  
> I never really thought about it until Husband and I started talking about fanfiction. He's not into dudes and for him, a gay romance can actually ruin even a plot-centric story. I don't have that *at all.* If it's well written, I'll read anything, and love it. Worst case scenario I read it and think "oh, okay, we're doing this now" and then carry on happily. I think it's because from my very first introduction to sex, it's been framed as something which I am not gonna be interested in, but must do anyway. 
> 
>  
> 
> On a completely different note, I have a ficrec this week called [Wingman.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3907351/chapters/8744773) It is poetry and metaphors and it will make you want to go on a road trip. It's a youthful encounter viewed with all the nostalgia of distant hindsight and an example of how one exchange can change your life. There's no sex but there is wincest and is is glorious. Read it over the weekend and have reports on my desk by Monday.


	30. Chapter 30

 

It turns out that the phone call _was_ from the FBI.

When Dean called the number back it was answered by a rather severe sounding woman named Naomi. He wasn’t sure if it was her first name or her last name and by the time he got a word in edgewise, he was afraid to ask.

She had complete copies of the case files regarding both Sam and Castiel, which indicated some really efficient work on her part, seeing as Dean had just picked Cas up a day ago. She was particularly interested in whether or not the two of them had gotten around to looking at Victor’s photos. Dean sent a questioning glance at Sam, who shook his head and went straight back to looking traumatized.

Naomi wanted to know what the hold-up was, and Dean had to inform her that his house had just been hexed, drive-by style. That made her pause for a moment, like she wanted to say something consolatory but couldn’t remember the social conventions.

“It’s cool,” Dean said when he realized she was struggling. “I had an angel fix my window.”

Castiel shot him a dirty look. He’d actually done a little bit more than that, but Dean didn’t really want to start spreading that around, especially to federal agents and especially over the phone.

“Mister Winchester, I don’t mean to pry, but are you… _prone_ to violent victimization?”

“Not usually, but my life’s been a little weird lately. I actually got an interesting call from Victor this morning- you know Victor?”

“Detective Henriksen, yes.”

“Yeah. Well, _he_ says that you’re cracking open a ring and that a lot of really important members made bail this morning. So I’m thinking this might be related to that. Since we’re, you know, witnesses and all.”

“It’s possible. Would you like us to send someone out to watch the house?”

“Nah, I think we’ve got it covered.”

_To say the least._

She didn’t ask for more details and he didn’t offer. She told him to be careful and to set the angel on the photos and hung up without further small talk. Dean tossed the phone onto the couch, then realized he’d meant to pick up another one while he was out. Shit.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Sam asked, and klaxons started going off in Dean’s head because he’d never had a _good_ conversation that started that way.

The brick was still sitting in the middle of the living room, smoking gently where the remains of the hex bag were still attached. Normally, Dean would have kept it, checked it out to try to figure out what he was dealing with, but. Well. Cas hadn’t really stopped to ask about Dean’s standard operating procedure.

“Do we have to?” Dean asked, and Sam fixed him with a gaze that indicated, yes, they had to. Dean dug out a potholder, intent on taking care of the brick.

“Someone tried to kill you,” Castiel said, watching the brick-disposal nonchalantly. Dean shrugged.

“I’m pretty used to that, just generally, you know. Not in the house.”

Actually, _never_ in the house. Dean had ganked a lot of shit in his life, but none of it had ever followed him home. It was giving Dean a weird fluttery feeling in his stomach and he was set on ignoring that.

“It’s because of us,” Sam said hollowly, and the little flutteries ramped up their activity. “They tried to kill _us_ ,” he said, gesturing to himself and the angel.

“Well, they suck at it. We’re fine.”

Sam looked up at Dean with wide eyes.

“They screwed up _this_ time. Dean, we have to leave.”

“No way, we’re not staying in hotels until this thing is over.”

“No. Me and Cas. We have to go. We’re the evidence, not you.”

“Hey, I’m a witness too,” Dean said defensively, and then backtracked when he realized what Sam was saying. “You’re not talking about going _without_ me?”

“We have to. Once they realize they failed, they’ll be back. And you don’t… you don’t understand the kind of people they are.”

Castiel was watching Sam talk with an expression Dean couldn’t decipher. Sam’s voice was getting faster.

“You saw the kinds of things they did for fun. Imagine the things they’d do for _revenge._ This is way too big. They can’t be fought. Best case scenario, we don’t drag you down with us.”

“ _I_ intend to fight,” Cas said in a level voice. He was calm enough that Sam was temporarily derailed. “It can be done, if you aren’t determined to sacrifice yourself for your master.”

“Not his master,” Dean interjected, but Cas waved him off. Then the seraph looked back at him, scrutinizing, and Dean felt something in his chest _yank_ -

 

The phone rang and glass shattered and the hex bag rolled across the floor, and the moment Castiel saw it, he knew it meant death for the humans who had taken him in. He could tell Dean knew it too, and Sam- well. Sam didn’t know magic but he knew that good tidings were rarely delivered through living room windows. And Sam knew who it was from, and why it was there, and who it was for, and what he needed to do.

Sam was too far away, too insubstantial, this wasn’t a bullet you could dive in front of. The room brightened in slow motion, the magic over spilling its bonds, and Dean raised his arm to block the light. And Sam was moving, but he was too slow, and it didn’t matter anyway. But the intent was there anyway. Overpowering and compelling and surrounding and omnipresent.

Castiel spread his wings, throwing half the room into dark shadow. The magic hit him like a wave, roaring and falling back, harmless as dew on a flower petal.

In the end, it didn’t really matter. The poison that had come rushing out of the hex bag would have killed most people in seconds, but then again, most people didn’t have fresh purification circles painted on their living room floors.

What escaped the circle might have given the humans, at worst, a migraine and some persistent nausea, but Sam didn’t know that.

Sam didn’t know it, so the thoughts he shoved into Castiel reflected all the seriousness he believed the situation to have.

 

Dean staggered back.

“He made you protect us?”

Castiel frowned.

“He expressed a sincere desire that I do what I could to shield you.”

“Wait, I did what?”

This was apparently news to Sam.

“ _Just_ me?” Dean asked slowly. Castiel nodded.

“But my wings work better in pairs and I’ve grown somewhat fond of Sam, so I shielded him, as well.”

Once, on a hunt, a ghost had reached into John’s chest cavity and twisted his actual literal heart. That was the look Sam had on his face now.

“I did _what?_ ”

“You asked me to save your master,” Cas explained. “Quite eloquently, I’d say, given the time you had to work with.”

Dean raised a finger.

“Not his master.”

“Not up to you.”

Dean thought maybe Castiel didn’t understand how slavery worked, and filed the topic away for discussion at a later date.

“This just proves my point, though,” Sam interrupted. “Apparently I’m bringing killers down on your head and I’m shoving Cas into the way. Neither of you are safe.”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed.

“You compelled me to do nothing, human. Do not overestimate your abilities.”

“Alright alright. You’re very superior, thanks for saving our lives. Sam, the weight of the world does not rest on your shoulders. Cool it.”

Sam looked pained.

The way Dean saw it, they needed a game plan. They were outgunned, sure, but he was playing on home field and that gave him the advantage. Whoever was out to kill them probably wouldn’t be back until morning, so they had that going for them, at least.

Cas had actually managed to fix the window, and the smoldering remains of the hex bag were cooling in the front yard, so those were another couple of pluses. For now, the house was safe, they just needed to keep it that way.

For the next three hours, Dean worked his way across the front of the house, marking sigils into the top sills of the windows and doors. It wouldn’t keep out a brick, but it would negate any magic riding shotgun.

Sam followed after him, comparing his sigils to the references in the manual, using a small chisel to clean the edges of the marks and make sure they were legible. And Cas… Cas kept the sun up. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like to Dean. Standing on a chair in front of a plate-glass window seemed like a particularly vulnerable position to him, so Cas took up a position in the front yard keeping watch. And since he wasn’t going to do it in the dark, the angel lit the woods up as bright as day. It actually hurt to look at him, a little bit.

 

“Where would you go?” Dean asked after a little while. “If you did leave.”

Sam glanced over, then went back to his work. “I don’t know. I’d figure it out.”

His whole body was tense, and Dean could feel the other man’s fear seeping into his bones.

“I’m not asking you to go.”

“I know.”

The nervous feeling retreated somewhat and Dean realized how impossible it was to lie to someone who was, in some way, inside your own head.

Fucking weird.

He looked back out at Cas, then blinked away the afterimage and resumed carving.

“This isn’t your fault, you know.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“My former owners are smashing up your house trying to kill me because I went to the police about them, how is this not my fault?”

Dean counted off on his fingers.

“If you’re gonna look at it that way? I bought an illegal slave. Then _I_ went to the cops. Then I raided one of their hideouts and stole their angel. Plus, I’m the one keeping you here with my irresistible sex appeal. You have no choice, really.”

He waggled his eyebrows and Sam looked away.

“I guess not,” he said quietly, a small smile playing at his lips.   
“Yeah?”

He’d been kidding, but he’d be lying if he didn’t notice the way Sam’s arms flexed under his shirt as he carved. Sam glanced over.

“I can feel you doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Wanting me,” Sam said simply. His voice was neutral. Dean flushed red.

“It’s not… I mean…”

“I like it,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off his work.

“Oh.” Dean lost track of what he was supposed to be doing. “I’ll… keep doing it then?”

“Alright.”

 

 

It was past one in the morning when they finished the warding, and Dean was so tired he’d be surprised if the last set was even any good. He called out to Cas, letting the angel know that they’d finished and it was safe to come back inside. Castiel replied that he would rather stay outside, thank you very much, and since he didn’t sleep Dean figured that was probably fine.

He brushed his teeth while Sam straightened the sheets, and then Sam stripped off his shirt while Dean searched for his pillow. Sam was reaching for a sleep shirt but then Dean got to staring, and Sam could _feel_ him staring, and Dean _knew_ that he could feel him staring. He paused by the edge of the bed, not moving, letting Dean look. Dean thought maybe he’d like to put his mouth on the hollow of Sam’s throat, and Sam thought he’d probably be amenable to that.

Sam thought it was unfair that Dean was still wearing a shirt, and Dean pulled it over his head, thinking that if they were being honest, their pants were probably just going to get in the way, too. So Sam popped the button on his fly and Dean remembered how the skin there had tasted, just two days ago. Dean was sporting three quarters of a hardon by then, Sam noticed, which was probably fair since the two of them were sharing a thought process and Sam was _also_ standing at half-mast. He thought maybe he’d like Dean to suck him off again, or maybe he was just picking up on _Dean_ wanting to suck him off again, but at the end of the day it didn’t really matter where the thoughts came from as long as they were acted on promptly, and that’s how the two of them ended up falling into bed in a tangle of limbs.

They couldn’t stay still, couldn’t agree what they wanted to do, and they ended up rolling over and over and tangling in the sheets as they tried to adopt to ideas as fast as they were having them. Dean’s fingers were tangling in Sam’s hair, one leg wrapped around his hip, rutting together like teenagers and Dean wasn’t completely certain whose desires he was feeling.

Dean felt like he was being pulled, some magnet just behind his pubic bone yanking him forward, against Sam and almost _through_ him. He pushed forward, desperate and needy, trying to connect to the other man in a way that no amount of grasping or pinning or sucking would ever come close to meeting.

“The fuck _is_ that?” he groaned.

“Bond,” Sam said simply, and then it opened, and Dean _saw_.

Sam’s body gleamed like burnished copper, eyes burning like twin suns, and when he pulled Dean toward him his skin was impossibly hot. His lips pressed to Dean’s and Dean realized there wasn’t actually a differentiation, not anymore, not here. Sam gripped his hips, fingers leaving divots and then sinking in and Dean saw what Castiel had seen.

Castiel had called him Master but it wasn’t that, it was so much more than that. Here, where there was nothing between them, Sam belonged to him because here, at his very purest, Sam _loved_ him.

Dean panicked, scrambling backwards and slamming the bond closed. It was suddenly very dark, Sam’s wide eyes close to black in the moonlight.

“What? What happened?”

Sam thought he’d done something wrong, because of course he would, wouldn’t he? He’d take it all onto himself, whatever it took to make Dean happy, keep Dean safe.

It was too much. Dean tried to stammer out an apology or an explanation but nothing came. Sam had just used some psychic shit to tell him he owned his _soul,_ and what the fuck do you even say to that?

It didn’t help that the blood flow to his brain was still being efficiently diverted to the southern territories. Sam’s skin was alabaster in the pale light, all smooth planes and lithe muscles and-

“I need some air,” Dean stammered, casting around for a pair of boxers before- call it what it is- fleeing.    

 

 

 

Dean had assumed that their assailants wouldn’t come back until morning, and he was part right. They were waiting for sunrise before approaching the house again. From the conversation he’d picked up, Castiel assumed they were waiting for police to show up- sirens meant the hex bag had failed. Silence meant it had worked.

Humans, Castiel gathered, were not big on solving their own problems, not when it came to violence or hidden attackers in the night.

What’s more, they expected _Castiel_ to be vulnerable to the magic they’d sent through the window. Come morning, they were expecting to enter the house and find two dead humans and an incapacitated angel.

From his place atop the roof of their car, Castiel listened and tried not to be insulted.

He wasn’t sure why Alistair wanted him back- normally, Castiel thought, slitting someone’s throat indicated that your business with that someone had concluded. Evidently, that was not the case, because here he was, sitting not so patiently and waiting for sunrise.

“If they were still alive we’d have seen it by now.”

This voice was deep, belonging to the companion that Castiel had dubbed Sycophant Two. Sycophant One was mostly quiet, letting Alistair debate the pros and cons of their plan with his fellow lackey.

“The spell could take hours to dissipate, we’ve been over this.”

“Or it could be long gone by now. I’ll go check, report back, and we can be on our way hours early.”

“If you’re that desperate to stick your own neck out, then fine. You go look, and if the spell hasn’t dissipated, we’ll throw your corpse in the trunk with the angel when we leave.”

“At least I’d be out of these creepy fucking woods,” Sycophant Two said, unlocking his door. He climbed out of the passenger seat, rolled his shoulders, slammed the door, and opened his mouth to shout when he saw the seraph perched on top of the car.

Castiel reached over, his fingertips brushing against Two’s forehead, and the man was dead before he hit the ground.

“The fuck? Frank?”

Ah. So that had been his name.

Alistair was smart, throwing two doors open at once and climbing out while Castiel was busy with his other lackey. The man fell to the ground, a thin plume of smoke escaping his dead lips.

“That’s very naughty of you, Castiel,” Alistair said dryly, regarding him from several meters away. The blade in his hand glinted silver. “You’ll be punished for that when we get you back home.”

The sound of his voice sent a shiver down Castiel’s spine, and he curled his wings protectively around his body. It was weak, defensive, almost _submissive,_ and Castiel hated it, but he couldn’t stop his body from reacting.

“You look different without all my little toys,” Alistair remarked, looking him over. “We’ll have to put those back. Come along then, into the back with you.”

Castiel backed off quickly, hoping to cover the fact that the bangles weren’t sparking.

“You’re on a fool’s errand. The passage is closed.”

“We opened it once, we can do it again.”

Castiel’s smile was sharp.

“You were able to do it once because we weren’t expecting an attack from _mice._ The most rudimentary defenses will hold your species off for aeons.”

“Rudimentary, Castiel, really? Does building a rudimentary defense usually leave you stranded and bound?” Alistair’s face held genuine curiosity. “Are you that weak? Or did the others just want to be rid of you?”

Castiel didn’t respond. His eyes were focused on the blade Alistair held. The man didn’t know his mark was gone, still thought Castiel was bound to his word. One nick of that blade, though, and it wouldn’t matter.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in seeing how you measure up to others of your species.”

“You’ll die never knowing,” Castiel told him, and lunged.

His wings made him fast, flaring wide and pushing back, driving him forward faster than the human could react. He gathered up his grace, centering it in the palms of his hands, shoving it into Alistair’s body when his fingers closed around the human’s neck.

It wouldn’t go. Castiel realized a split second too late that the power he had left wasn’t enough, not even to burn out a shriveled little toad like Alistair.

The human swiped at him with the blade and Castiel caught his wrist. Alistair was ready for it, driving his head forward into Castiel’s jaw, and it was all the seraph could do not to bite his tongue. He staggered back, losing his balance and falling against the car when Alistair swiped at him again.

Options. He needed options.

He hadn’t realized he was so low. The grace centered inside him felt warm and full and solid, not the cold wispy fog he’d come to associate with starvation.

Options.

He caught Alistair’s arm again, yanking it high and trying not to jerk back in revulsion when the motion brought the human closer to him.

He remembered this feeling.

Options.

He twisted Alistair’s wrist and the man dropped his knife. Castiel twisted further and Alistari withdrew, turning to the side to try to relieve the pressure on his elbow. It only transferred the torsion to his shoulder, and Castiel was able to bring a leg up and shove the man away from him. Alistair went tumbling to the ground and Castiel dropped, scooping up the knife without taking his eyes off the human. Alistair was scrambling for something on the ground, a dark shape a few feet from his fallen comrade.

A gun, Castiel realized, but it was too late to react.

Alistair turned and fired, the bullet passing cleanly through Castiel’s left wing. He hissed in pain, trying to draw the injured limb inward, but the pain only spiked when he tried to move it.

“You wretched little brat,” Alistair growled, rubbing at his injured shoulder. “You’re going to pay for that. Drop it.”

The collar sparked, and the blade seemed to grow hot in Castiel’s hand. He willed his muscles to tighten, to hold on, but he didn’t have the grace to fight. The knife clattered to the ground. Alistair advanced toward him, gun held out for Castiel to see.

“Get on your knees, Castiel. You’re gonna suck the barrel clean and pray to your heathen god that I decide not to kill you.”

Castiel sank to his knees, focused on keeping his jaw clenched shut because he _wouldn’t._

He would, he’d have to.

He’d licked his own blood off knives before, what was _wrong_ with these creatures-

His injured wing flared with agony when he shifted it against the ground. It settled, bent awkwardly, and he resolved to ignore it.

“Open, Castiel.”

The silver cuffs were alight now, he could feel his skin beginning to burn. He focused on keeping his mouth shut. Alistair raised the gun so that Castiel was staring down the barrel.

“I do love it when you fight me. Hurting you is just that much more fun when you hurt yourself, first.”

The barrel jerked and the sound of a gunshot cracked through the air. Alistair looked confused for a moment, raising his hand to his chest. When he pulled it away, it was sticky and red.

“Fuck,” he growled, then unloaded the rest of his clip into Castiel. The first three shots landed, but the rest went wide as the human toppled to the ground. The collar grew cold.

“Cas? Jesus fuck, _Cas?_ ”

The gunshot must have roused Dean, then.

Castiel pulled himself to his feet, slipping once when some muscle group in his core refused to pull its weight.

“I’m here,” he called to the approaching figure, and Dean shouted something unintelligible back. Castiel took two steps toward him and then turned back, regarding the body on the ground.

“Back in the mud where you belong,” he muttered, and spat.

His mouth tasted like blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to get written on Friday, but I got sick. Really sick. Like, I spent the day with the persistent feeling that I was three feet to the left of where I really was, and it's really hard to adjust, visually, to that scenario. I was awake just long enough to watch "Ten Inch Hero" in between bouts of vivid hallucinating. 
> 
> It ended up being a good thing because I'm kind of struggling with where to take this story. Thankfully, Castiel showed up at my house and we talked about it while watching the movie adaptation. The whole thing with Cas and the car? I'm just writing down my memory of the _movie version I hallucinated._
> 
> It was so real, you guys. 
> 
> And then this morning I got to have a discussion with Husband about the word 'heteronormative' which he had never heard before. He's dubious. I'm holding my ground. 
> 
>  
> 
> In other news, I'm getting a preggo cat tomorrow so I'll let you know how that goes. 
> 
>  
> 
> Oh! Earlier in this story I asked for a lawyer, now I need an EMT. I want to get [this bracelet](http://www.amazon.com/My-Identity-Doctor-Browser-Bracelet/dp/B00QEXJQAC) but in the case of an actual medical emergency, would you guys see this and get pissed? Because I have this vision of me lying there unconscious and the concerned paramedics checking the bracelet and being like 'no, fuck this douche' and just leaving.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gasp! An extra long chapter? With sex?!?! Hot damn, boys, Christmas done come early.

“That was dumb, Cas.”

Even with one of his arms slung around Dean’s shoulders, it was taking every ounce of concentration to stay upright. His vessel behaved unexpectedly on good days, but all torn up like this, it was damn near unmanageable.

Castiel wanted to go home. Back where things were predictable and people behaved in a civil manner.

“You should have told me they were back. I could have shot them just as easy with you behind me.”

“I could handle it.”

“Yeah, clearly.”

His wing was beginning to drag on the ground. He kept yanking it up and back, but it was slipping and he wasn’t sure how to make it stop. His magic was crackling around the edges of the wounds- they’d stopped bleeding by now, he was pretty sure. So he had enough power left to do that, at least. Good to know that everything in this world was _utterly and completely unpredictable._

They rounded the corner and the house came into view, lit up and bright. Castiel didn’t need to look to know that Sam was standing in the door. He’d been nosing around Castiel’s bond ever since Dean’s gunshots, questioning and worried despite Castiel’s repeated assurances that he was fine.

Sam was reaching out for Dean, too, encircling their bond and settling down into it like a kitten in a basket. Dean, though, Dean was prickling at the contact and pulling back like he thought it was going to sting him.

Castiel eyed the open doorway with distaste. The house was the humans’ territory, thoroughly marked from floor to ceiling. It was vaguely unsettling for him to be inside, and being inside while wounded was going to be even worse.

His wing slipped again and he yanked it upward, wincing as a bolt of pain went through his shoulder. He could be wrong, but it felt like there was still a bullet in there, wedged between the twin scapulae.

That was going to be an issue.

“Why’d you stop? Come on, we’ll get you patched up.”

Bracing himself, Castiel let Dean lead him back into the house.

Just stepping over the door, the air was warmer, heavier, and the faint scent of humans permeated everything.

Sam had already laid out the first aid kit, an impressive array of bandages and saline now covering the kitchen table. Light glinted off a hooked needle, sterile inside it’s plastic package, and Castiel froze.

“No. I don’t- you don’t-”

Sam raised his hands slowly, leaving the tools on the table.

“Just thought they’d help,” he said evenly, and Castiel realized how easy it would be for Dean to twist his arm back, hold him still while Sam-

He wrenched away from the hunter, ignoring the burst of pain from his shoulder. A second, muted wave bubbled up from his side and he buckled, falling back and struggling to regain his balance. Dean was reaching for him and he dodged away.

“No!” he said again, and his back was to the wall now. He brought his arms up- he had no magic and no weapon, but humans were wary of hand to hand combat.

“Cas, hey-” Dean started, but Sam was already there, pushing through the bond, soothing Castiel’s frayed nerves.

“Stay back.”

He was calmer now, listening to Sam but keeping his eyes on Dean. Dean was closer and still showing every intention of approaching, his hands raised like he was calming a skittish animal. Castiel bared his teeth.

“Dean…” Sam said, warning him off. Castiel glanced at the taller man. He was still in the kitchen, leaning against a countertop with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. He was practically radiating calm. Castiel’s eyes flicked back to Dean. There was nothing coming from the older man but confusion.

Which made sense, because he’d just half-carried Castiel inside and had never done anything to hurt him. So there was no reason for this reaction from the angel. On some level, Castiel knew that. On another, deeper and more powerful level, he was hurting and surrounded in enemy territory, and his body said _fight._ It didn’t help that Sam was worked up about the gunshots and Dean was worked up about…. something.

“I don’t need help. I’ll heal fine on my own.”

Sam nodded, and made no move to pack the bandages away.

“Who shot you?”

“Alistair.”

“Alistair’s _here_?”

_Panic._

“That was Alistair?” Dean’s eyes widened. “Like, Alistair from the basement massacre? That Alistair?”

Castiel nodded slightly, keeping his eyes on Dean.

“Fuck, if I’da known that I’da shot him in the gut instead of the chest.”

“Alistair’s dead?”

The fear rolling off Sam turned into confusion and then relief. Castiel felt his own shoulders relax as the onslaught slowed.

“Yes. And the two men he had with him.”

“I should probably text Naomi.”

Dean backed away at last, searching the living room for his phone, and Castiel’s shoulders relaxed the rest of the way. There was another vicious twinge and his wing slipped.

There was definitely a bullet between the scapulae. He could feel it grinding.

“You’re out of juice again, aren’t you,” Sam asked, and Castiel shot him a glare.

“Striking the life from your bodies is harder than your constitutions would lead one to believe.”

“That’s a yes, then.”

The edge of the bond thrummed as Sam circled it, and Castiel sighed. No use pretending otherwise.

“Yes. “  
“Is that why you and Alistair were slapfighting to the death?” Dean had found his phone and was fiddling with it while he talked, presumably informing the authorities that there were corpses on his property that needed to be disposed of.

Castiel gave up trying to hold his injured wing aloft, and it slumped against the floor with a final, tired surge of pain.

“I resorted to physical combat because my attempt to use my magic failed. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“Cas, you could have asked us for help,” Sam said gently, and Castiel sent a surge of anger at him through the bond.

“I shouldn’t _need_ your _help,_ ” he hissed.

“Yeah, that’s why Alistair turned you into swiss cheese. Speaking of which, you want me to stitch you up or are you just gonna stand there and bleed to death outta spite?”

“I’ll heal. Give it time.”

“We don’t have time. Cops are gonna be here in twenty and we’ve gotta get our story straight by then.”

 

Sam, as it turned out, was tapped out. Castiel took a cursory glance through the bond and refused to do another transfer. He huffed and went to take a look around Alistair’s car, leaving Dean and Castiel alone in the living room.

“So, like last time then?”

Castiel shook his head.

“I can focus it much more clearly now. You should sit down. Sam and I had the most luck on the floor.”

“Yeah, Sam likes that.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t comment. Instead he sat down in the same place as before, taking care to fold his wing behind him. Dean folded down across from him, just close enough that Castiel could reach him, if he leaned forward.

“You should be able to feel me, when I do this.”

He pushed against the bond and Dean’s eyes widened slightly. He licked his lips.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can feel that.”

Castiel looked at him carefully for a moment, and then eased the bond open. Dean’s eyes got wider, and he hesitantly approached it from his own side. Castiel didn’t rush him, and after a moment, he reached through.

Castiel felt the same warm forest green, encircling him like last time. Dean’s life force flowed in great wide ribbons, wrapping and swaddling and holding him in.

There was a faint cracking sound as his forward scapula snapped back into place, the pieces of the broken bone knitting back together. His flesh mended where three of the bullets had passed through, leaving nothing but a small puckered dot. The fourth bullet was still lodged in his shoulder, and he grimaced as his body worked to reject it.

The small projectile wormed its way to the surface, forging a new path between the bones and up through the meat of his shoulder, finally piercing the skin and falling to the floor with a _ping._ A band of green rolled it’s way across his shoulders, and the exit wound closed over.

 

 

Dean was the smooth talker, of course, but he was still out cold when the cops showed up. Sam had to manage on his own, based on what Dean had told him before.

Sam identified Alistair, but the other two he’d never seen before. The officers photographed the corpses, the burned remains of the brick and hex bag, the restraints and warding in the trunk of the dead mens’ car and, lastly, Castiel. The angel crossed his arms, his wings tight behind his back, and narrowed his eyes at the photographer. The officer in charge was not amused.

“And he’s a… _what_ now?”

“A seraph,” Sam repeated. “He used to belong to Alistair-” (and here Castiel’s wings flared and a massive burst of indignation forced its way through the bond. Sam sent a silent apology back) “-but we’re holding him, pending the results of an extensive abuse investigation.”

“Never heard of a seraph.”

“Us neither, but we’re taking his word for it.”

“Hmmm,” the officer mused. He was looking to where the coroner was shuffling the desiccated bodies into bags, and thinking he probably wouldn’t take Castiel’s word for much at all. “You want me to call creature control? Get these mugs off your back and get him outta your hair.”

Castiel bristled, but there was fear there, too. Sam pushed more reassurances through the bond.

“I think we’ll manage fine here, officer.”

“You sure? They’ve got a real good containment center down there, they can keep him locked right down until you need him. From what I’m seeing here, it looks like he’s dangerous.”

“Just following orders and protecting his owners,” Sam responded.

Castiel huffed, turning and ascending into a nearby tree. He perched easily on an upper branch and did a very good impression of someone who was paying no attention to Sam at all.

“I can see he’s trained real good,” the officer said, staring up into the darkness at the angel. Sam shrugged.

“I won’t deny he has an attitude. Anyway, if he starts making trouble, creacon’s just gonna call a hunter, and one of those already lives here.”

“Right,” the officer said, still looking up at Castiel. “And he’s where, exactly?”

“Aahhh…” Sam turned his attention back down the drive, toward the house. “I think he’s taking a call?”

“Must be an important call.”

“I’m sure it is,” Sam said with a thin smile. “Is there anything else I can help you with? It’s very late…”

“No, this seems pretty open and shut. Give us a call if anything else comes up and, uh, keep an eye on the seraph, will ya? Just between you and me, I think you’re nuts keeping him in the house. Those bodies give me the creeps.”

Castiel, who could hear him just fine, responded with a cheshire cat smile. Fortunately, it was too dark for the officer to see, even if he had glanced back up.

Sam headed back up toward the house, leaving the others to their work. He rubbed his eyes. The sun would be up in a couple hours and he had every intention of shutting the bedroom door and ignoring it completely.

Castiel fell into step beside him.

“You lied to them.”

“Yes. Try not to kill anyone else. I know you think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread but here, you’re a creature and that does not put you high up on the totem pole.”

“You presume I’m participating in your ‘totem pole.’”

“Yeah, I am,” Sam said. They’d rounded the bend and the house was coming into view. “Because Dean and I are participating, and we’ve been put in charge of you. And you just got your ass kicked by one guy, so sorry if I don’t see you toppling the system any time soon.”

Castiel scowled, then paused and inclined his head toward the house, listening.

“Dean is awake.”

“Hopefully not for long. God, I’m beat.”

“There’s something troubling him.”

“He’s probably just freaked out by the whole ‘hexed in his own living room’ thing.”

“No, it’s nothing so trivial. It’s something to do with you.”

Sam snorted.

“Yeah, like I’m not trivial.”

Castiel gave him a strange look. Sam sighed.

He’d tried reaching out to Dean through the bond, and Dean had freaked. Pulled his clothes on and bolted. It turned out to be for the best- it meant Dean was outside when the shooting started- but still. Sam had to wonder what had bothered the other man so much.

Castiel said that the bond wasn’t a physical link, and he was right. But when Sam reached out, he could _feel_ the other two there. Castiel felt like walking through a fall rain, cool and beautiful in a way that made you feel grateful for your windbreaker. But Dean…

When Sam was younger, they’d spent a few summer months living in a KOA cabin. Sam had learned to swim and made friends with the ever-changing group of children staying in nearby campsites, but what he remembered was the hammock. Just a standard polyester hammock, left behind by some prior occupant, strung up and forgotten. Sam had spent hours and hours in that hammock, reading borrowed novels in the dappled summer sunlight, eventually falling asleep and waking to green leaves and the sound of cicadas. That’s what Dean felt like.

Sam wondered what he felt like, to other people. If he’d ever be able to feel minute differences, the way Castiel did. If he’d be able to open and close the bonds effortlessly and easily, the way the angel could.

Dean didn’t have a problem working with Castiel- when the angel needed to do a transfer, Dean had offered without hesitating. But the bond with Sam was bothering him.

Castiel was still staring at him, like he was trying to puzzle out the human’s meaning.

“Nevermind. Forget I said anything. I’m going to sleep. Do you need anything?”

“You told him.”

Sam felt a little twinge through the bond, like Castiel had reached out and touched something.

“Just ask, Cas, you don’t have to go digging through my head.”

“This is faster.”

The angel frowned.

“You think he has rejected you.”

Sam blinked.

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

The twinge got stronger and Sam railed against it, trying to force the angel back.

“Stop it, Cas!”

“You think he’s rejected you for _me,_ ” the seraph said, wrinkling his nose.

Sam shoved him.

Castiel caught himself easily, wings flaring as he regained his balance. Sam shoved again, this time through the bond, and this time Castiel actually _smirked_ as he waved off the attack.

“I don’t want your master, Sam.”

Sam’s jaw set, his eyes narrowing at the angel. He turned and stalked back toward the house. After a moment he had a thought, and turned back for one last look at Castiel.

“Just remember, if I told you to go fuck yourself, you’d have to do it.”

 

Dean was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin. He looked up when Sam came in.

“Hey, I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Don’t bother, they’re gone.”

Dean rubbed his eyes.

“I gather they bought it then?”

“Yeah. They wanted to take Cas down to creacon, but I talked them out of it.”

“Fuckers would just call me if it went south, anyway.”

“That’s what I told them.”

Dean stared at the coffee as though blaming it for his chaotic night. When it refused to apologize, he cracked open the bottle of aspirin.

“Where is feathers, anyway?”

Sam shrugged.

“Outside. I don’t think he likes it in here. Fine by me.”

“What, you guys all done playing leather and lace?”

“I was trying to help him,” Sam snapped. “It’s not my fault he’s scared of me.”

Then again, maybe it is his fault. Castiel could barely stand being within a couple feet of Sam. He would open the connection and then yank back like it had burned him. He’d watched Sam the way Sam had looked at Azazel. It would be easy to blame it on Castiel, say he’s just paranoid, but…

But he hadn’t been afraid of Dean.

Sam wondered what he looked like to other people.

He wondered if he even wanted to know.  

Dean’s phone buzzed, but he barely glanced at it before tossing it to the side.

“God, the Salina PD can gossip. That was Charlie. I’m guessing we’ll be hearing from the janitor next.”

Sam crossed the room slowly, the darkened doorway of the bedroom beckoning. Sam looked back at Dean. Whatever he looked like on the inside, Dean was attracted to his body. It was something.

“Come to bed.”

Dean shook his head.

“It’s almost morning, I’m gonna try to just push through.”

“Dean.” His voice was soft, feminine, the way Abaddon had taught him. “Come to bed.”

Dean looked up, raising an eyebrow. Sam tilted his chin toward the door, looking up at Dean through bedroom eyes. When Dean hesitated, Sam shrugged, turning toward the doorway with practiced nonchalance.

“Suit yourself,” he said casually, pulling his shirt off and discarding it by the door. He’d had gotten halfway across their bedroom before he heard the kitchen chair scraping across the floor. He smiled slightly. He could still do this, at least. His hands were steady, unbuckling his belt and dropping his clothes to the floor. When Dean’s shadow fell across the doorway, Sam was ready for him, leaning down to draw him into a kiss.

Dean hesitated, probably remembering the way this scenario had already played out once today. Sam’s hands rested on his hips, fingers skimming under the band of his jeans, and Dean relaxed. His mouth fit to Sam’s perfectly, fingers running through his long hair.

“I want you so bad.”

Dean’s breath caught, but before he could respond Sam was gripping at the hem of his shirt, teasing it up over his body. He raised his arms, letting Sam undress him, but Sam only got it as far as Dean’s elbows before twisting the slack around his wrist. The older man was left trapped, the shirt holding his arms up and back, the collar pressed tight over his eyes.

“Sam-” he started, but Sam cut him off, kissing him deep. Dean gasped when he pulled away, then moaned when Sam worked his way down the side of his jaw and over his shoulder.

He released the shirt and Dean whipped it off, pushing Sam backwards onto the bed and pinning him. One knee landed on the edge of the mattress, rough denim holding Sam’s legs apart. He hooked one leg around Dean’s hips, pulling him down and grinding against him. The other man was hard as marble inside his jeans, and Sam made sure that Dean’s cock fit into the hollow of his hip as he rolled up.

Here, he had to improvise, because slaves never undressed their masters unless ordered to do so. They were supposed to wait, but Sam didn’t think Dean knew that, so the next time the kiss broke, Sam slipped his hands between them and popped the button on Dean’s pants open. He worked the zipper down, stroking Dean through the cotton of his boxers.

Dean moaned softly, his mouth hot on the hollow of Sam’s throat. His fingers skimmed over Sam’s side, reaching between them. Sam was expecting this- Dean was a textbook reciprocal lover.

Dean drew back, watching him through hooded eyes, and that was a new one. Sam wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“God, look at you,” Dean said in a low voice, and Sam wasn’t sure what to make of that, either, so he leaned up and drew Dean back down into a kiss.

“I want you. Please,” he said when they broke apart again. He knew how to beg for it. He knew how to take it and make it good and if that’s how he could be close to Dean, then that’s what he would do.

Dean looked at him with a question in his eyes but Sam ignored it, instead focusing on divesting Dean of his remaining clothing. He pulled the other man down onto the bed, arching up into him.

Dean wanted him- he could feel it even with the bond closed. And it _was_ closed. He was holding it firmly shut, unwilling to open it even a crack for fear that whatever was inside him would leak out and scare Dean off for good.

He let Dean touch him, enjoying it but never losing focus on his own actions. Dean moved slowly over his body, working with a care and attention that Sam wasn’t used to. Dean touched him like he was exploring, making a map of Sam’s body and committing it to memory.

Sam wasn’t used to being remembered. Something inside reached out for Dean before he smothered it, clamping it down before it could actually make contact.

Dean asked him if he was sure and Sam nodded, pleasantly surprised to find that it was true. He knew it couldn’t last, it never had. Dean was going to get tired of him just like the others, but for now, he wanted this.

He laid back and let Dean work him open, slow and easy. The hunter was far more careful than he needed to be, but Sam didn’t hurry him. He was determined to let this last as long as Dean wanted it to. Sam, for his part, thought that he could lie here forever, letting Dean’s body cover his.

He reached for Dean but the older man just pushed him back, catching his wrists and pressing them gently to the mattress.

“Let me,” was all Dean said, and Sam let him. His fingers were slick and hot inside Sam’s body, spreading him wide. His other hand closed around Sam’s cock, stroking him gently while massaging him from the inside.

Sam started to lose his focus a little.

“Please, Dean, I want-” the words cut off with a hiss when Dean’s finger circled over something inside him. Whatever he’d been about to say, it was lost in a burst of color and light. He moaned softly, rocking his hips against Dean’s hands. Heat was coiling in his belly, and it flared when he opened his eyes and saw Dean looking down at him in the darkness.

He reached up ( _don’t do that, he put your hands down, he wants them down_ ) and cupped Dean’s face and pulled him down into a kiss. It was deep and insistent, Sam trying to tell Dean everything this meant to him, not knowing if it meant anything to Dean at all.

His breath was coming in gasps now, the muscles of his belly tensing, and he forced them to relax. He put his hands on Dean’s, forcing the other man to stop.

“Not yet. I want you in me.” He wanted them to come together, but he wasn’t going to say it.

Dean withdrew and Sam rolled onto his belly, pillowing his head on his forearms and canting his hips into the air. Dean’s hands traveled over his hips, his thighs, his back, and Sam smiled.

“C’mon already.”

Dean’s mouth was on the nape of his neck, one arm wrapped around his midriff, holding him up and holding him close. His cock was hot and heavy where it lay against Sam’s thigh. He reached back, between his own legs, taking Dean into his and guiding him into place.

Dean gasped when the head brushed against Sam’s slick entrance. He moved slowly, letting the hard tip slide easily across the puckered skin. Sam whined, pushing back into the pressure. Dean nipped him on the shoulder, then pushed in.

Sam took him in easily, groaning at the dragging friction. The arm around his body gave him something to brace against, push back against, and kept him from being crushed down into the mattress.

“Ah, _fuck,_ Sam,” Dean groaned, withdrawing slightly and pushing back in. His hand dropped to Sam’s cock, and he stroked in time with his thrusts. Sam needed both arms to stop them from collapsing, but he rocked his body back into Dean’s, driving him deeper inside. He didn’t want to come until Dean was close, but the hunter was making it hard for him. Pushing forward drove him deeper into Dean’s fist, while pulling back impaled him fully on Dean’s cock.

And Dean was doing his best to make it good, stroking his thumb over Sam’s leaking slit and angling his hips to hit that sweet spot inside. When Sam hesitated he pushed forward, taking up the slack with his hips, and leaving Sam groaning into the pillow.

“Come for me,” Dean whispered, and Sam was gone.

 

Dean fell asleep afterwards, curled around Sam, their legs tangled together. One arm was thrown lazily over Sam’s hip, his fingers entwined with Sam’s. Sam rubbed the pad of his thumb in slow circles over Dean’s knuckle, thinking.

He could keep the bond closed. The one time he’d done it, it felt good to reach out to Dean, to feel him there. But if keeping it closed is what it took, then that’s what he’d do. And Cas….

Well, Cas wasn’t planning on staying very long. That much was obvious. So there was no point worrying about what the seraph thought of him.

It was a little disappointing. Sam thought they’d made progress while Dean was gone. The angel was actually interesting and intelligent, underneath all that searing attitude and thorny sarcasm. He’d been hoping to learn more about Castiel, about the angels, about the bonds, about any of it, really.

He caught himself searching for Castiel, wondering what the angel was up to, outside alone in the dark. He caught himself, reeling the feeling back in and clamping the bond down tight.

He’d done enough damage.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *weak coughing* 
> 
> I'm alive. 
> 
> This fic is officially longer than the first Harry Potter book. So, first off, major hats off to the folks messaging me to say they just read it all in one sitting. That's dedication.   
> Also: holy shit, you guys. I wrote _a book._ I always said I would one day, and then I gave up the dream because I could never stick with it long enough to finish. So if you're out there leaving kudos, commenting, or honestly just making my hit count go up: way to go. You guys are the real MVP. You're making this happen. I love talking about this with you, I really really do. 
> 
> Just for my own amusement, when I'm done writing this, I'm getting a copy printed up so I can put it on my bookshelf and feel disproportionately proud of myself. I'll take it down when I'm sixty and marvel at the fruits of my misspent youth.   
> So my question is: cover art.   
> Is there a scene or something that sticks with you guys, as a visual, that you'd put on the cover? If it were your book? Let me know what you think. Maybe I'll do some Terrible Sketches to show you for next time. 
> 
> Tomorrow is my day off. I'm going to post SOMETHING even if it kills me. Maybe not on this fic, but something. For sure. If I don't, it's because I was killed and eaten by this pregnant foster cat. She is SO MEAN.


	32. Chapter 32

More than three billion years ago, lightning hit a mud puddle and some amino acids fused sideways. It would have been utterly unremarkable except for the side effect of being a self-reproducing anomaly, and even _that_ wasn’t much to look at.

Every single living thing on the planet is a descendant of those self-replicating macromolecules, all of it the product of billions of years of shoving and jostling to make sure the carriers of your deoxyribonucleic acid is the one that eats instead of being eaten. The drive to replicate is inherent in every living creature by the sheer nature of the struggle; anything lacking the single-mindedness required to reproduce has long since died off.

So, from a theoretical point of view, Castiel could understand this.

In practice, it was confusing and maddening and occurring in his life with a frequency he found frankly unnecessary.

The branch scratched his belly when he stretched out, straddling the limb and resting his chin on his forearms. He looked down at the stream, flowing underneath his branch perfectly contentedly without any biological fluid exchanges at all.

It had taken him by surprise when his captors had raped him. His vessel was a close facsimile of human, but it was also _male._ Castiel could understand it if his vessel appeared female- it still couldn’t conceive with a human partner, but a casual observer may suspect at least a _chance._

Castiel held his captors in nothing but the most bitter contempt, but he was hard pressed to conclude that they were too stupid to understand their own reproductive systems. Maybe stupidity could account for one, or two, but there had been _so_ many more than that, and they’d used him in ways that couldn’t _possibly_ result in offspring-

Up at the house, Dean was approaching climax and Castiel halted his thought process to listen.

Sam, for some reason, was shuttered up inside his own mind like a hermit, refusing to let even a sliver of his light out into the bond. Castiel found it vaguely perverse, that they would interact so closely with the bond closed. It was like singing a duet with your mouth closed, but maybe it was different for humans. Who knew.

It didn’t seem to bother Dean- he was broadcasting like a beacon, probably not even aware he was doing it. The sensations in his body were overpowering the minute amount of control he had ever had over the bond, and the more Castiel listened, the more he was sure that Dean wasn’t paying attention at all.

Dean’s mind was utterly focused on his present situation, on Sam and the way their bodies intertwined and interacted. Castiel was a silent observer in all this, not reaching out to either partner. These actions were utterly foreign to him- he _knew_ Sam and Dean weren’t stupid, they _had_ to know that their actions were biologically pointless, and yet here they were.

Dean was reaching out to Sam, nudging uselessly around the edge of the bond, but Sam stayed locked down tight. Castiel wondered if Sam was angry with his master, refusing to open up to him because of some argument, but Dean didn’t seem to sense anything of that sort. On the contrary, Sam seemed to be doing everything possible to make Dean happy.

And Dean _was_ happy, Castiel realized. Far more so than would be called for by the fulfillment of a simple biological imperative. He was still reaching out for Sam, and though he wasn’t getting anything back, he kept doing it because it was the _reaching_ that he drew pleasure from.

_That_ couldn’t be right.

Inside the house, Dean reached the pinnacle of his orgasm and Castiel had to brace himself against the branch as the waves of pleasure pulsed through the bond. It was… interesting. There was no outpouring of joy for other bodily fulfillments. Castiel wasn’t pounded with waves of pleasure when the humans ate, or urinated, or awoke from sleep. Only this. This one thing, which they did seemingly without purpose.

He couldn’t settle comfortably back into his branch, and be belatedly realized that his vessel was aroused. He rolled his eyes and wished he were suited for a female vessel, one which wouldn’t need to deal with these indignities. But, for whatever arbitrary reason, the vessel had manifested as male when he arrived. So, he got to deal with this.

Back at the house, Sam and Dean were pulling the blankets up, still tangled together. Dean was still radiating contentment and satisfaction, Sam was still barricaded inside himself. It was a wonder Dean didn’t notice his absence, though Castiel supposed if the humans went their whole lives alone inside their own minds, they were unlikely to miss each other after only a few days.

Not like angels missed each other. Not like Castiel missed his brothers and sisters, the infinitely complex choir that served as the perpetual backdrop of home. He didn’t regret what he’d done, the spells which had left him stranded here in this silent, backwards world. But that didn’t keep him from missing them.

Sam fluttered at the edge of the bond and Castiel grabbed at him like a lifeline, suddenly desperate not to be alone in his mind, but the man had already retreated. The moment he was gone, Castiel kicked himself. He didn’t need mud men to keep him company. Barely better than nothing, really.

And his being here meant the passage was closed, no more angels could be pulled through into this world, and the mud men couldn’t get through to his home.

He hadn’t been lying to Alistair. The most rudimentary defenses were sufficient to hold the passage shut for aeons. The humans didn’t have the magic necessary to force it open, not when a seraph had been the one to close it. There was no spell he could tell them that would wrench it open again, not that they hadn’t asked.

They’d asked and the collar had sparked and burned and he’d said he didn’t know. Even with the collar they didn’t believe it, or maybe they did, it didn’t stop them from asking again and again while they worked him over-

Castiel realized he was reaching out for Dean, using the human’s calm, contented slumber as a counter point to the horrors in his own mind. He hesitated, plucking a leaf off the branch and shredding it while he contemplated. It probably wasn’t good to get in the habit of bonding with humans. They were simplistic and feral and most likely they’d never be able to communicate a fraction of the way that the angels could.

But, there weren’t angels here. Castiel was alone, and what he had was Dean.

Sighing, he reached out to the sleeping man, leaving the bond open and meeting him halfway across. It wasn’t like communicating with another seraph. It was the intellectual equivalent of stroking a cat, but it was better than nothing.

 

 

It was past mid-day when the humans roused from their sleep. By then, Castiel had come to a decision.

It was easier to enter the house when he wasn’t wounded. The permeating feeling of _human_ didn’t set him on edge when he knew he had the ability to fight or flee.

Not that he was going to be doing either of those, by the looks of it. Dean was barely mobile, hair mussed and shirt on backwards. Sam was slightly better, at least he had the mental wherewithal to work the coffee maker. He still had the bond sewed up tight, and Castiel took a moment to watch him. He didn’t look angry, or distressed. Castiel knew he was far from an expert on human body language, but Sam’s hands had a way of trailing across Dean’s shoulders when he passed, and that would indicate affection. Or maybe there was another reason for it, who knew with these two.

“The men who held me,” Castiel started. “They can be found?”

The humans both looked at him for a moment, like they’d forgotten he could talk. He met their gaze.

“Yeah, actually. Uh. There are some photographs we were supposed to look at, actually,” Sam said. Castiel’s eyes narrowed.

“Why the delay?”

Sam’s eyes darted to the floor and then back up to Castiel.

“Been busy. Hold on, I’ll get you the laptop.”

 

There were dozens of them. The folder that Sam showed him was filled with faces, and already, Castiel could see at least three that he knew.

“So the filenames are unique numbers,” Sam was saying. “So if you recognize the person in the photo, you mark down the number and where you saw them and what happened.”

“What about names?”

Sam shook his head.

“They’re identified by numbers to try to avoid bias as much as possible. In case we’ve heard a name on the news or something.”

“So then how do we find them?”

Sam hesitated.

“We don’t,” he said slowly. “We forward these back to Victor-”

“Naomi,” Dean interrupted.

“-whoever, and then they’re the ones who make the arrests.”

“And we trust them to mete out justice?”

Castiel was incredulous.

“Yeah. They go to trial and if there’s enough evidence, they get convicted and punished.”

Castiel had some ideas of his own on that process, but he kept them to himself. He might have to do some things behind the humans’ backs, and the less they knew, the easier that was going to be.

“That one,” he said, pointing to one of the photographs. “He was there when I was bound.”

Sam double-clicked the icon, and the photo enlarged to fill the entire screen. The man was maybe forty five, dressed in a suit and posed in front of a mottled gray background.

“ _That_ guy?” Dean asked, crossing the room to look over Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel stiffened, turning in his seat to try to keep the man in sight.

“Yes, that guy. Do you know him?”

“Dude’s a senator.”

The word meant nothing to Castiel, but Sam looked up sharply.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. He was on the news a couple weeks ago, actually. He was working to expand the list of enslavable offenses, bunch of people were pretty pissed.”

“He broke three of my fingers,” Castiel said evenly. “When I first got here.”

There had been a dozen of them, fascinated with the creature they’d caught. They were amazed by how quickly he healed, and had immediately set to damaging his vessel to see how quickly he could repair it. Castiel had been disoriented, bound by the silver cuffs and utterly unfamiliar with the feeling of being contained in a physical vessel. The pain (he later identified the sensation as pain) was all-encompassing, blocking every other thought from his mind and narrowing his focus to an unending litany of _stop stop stop stop stop._

He was better at ignoring it now, could shove it all down into a small corner of his mind and work through it, but in those first few hours, he’d had no such skills.

Sam was nodding, Dean looked a little sick.

“Why?” he asked weakly, and Sam’s face mirrored Castiel’s.

“Because he could, I suppose,” Castiel said, shrugging. “To be honest I have difficulty parsing out the reasons for many of the things humans do. This man here,” he said, pointing to another icon, “I think he’s some sort of doctor. He and an assistant spent a lot of time stripping the skin and muscles off my back, because they wanted to see how the wings connected.”

He paused there, remembering. They’d originally gone in with the intention of removing his wings entirely, taking them out by the root for study elsewhere. They’d talked about it at length while they stood over him, marking his skin with felt markers to remind themselves where to cut. Ultimately, they’d decided to leave the limbs in place, though Castiel was in too much pain to be relieved at the time.

“Alistair was there for that one,” he added. “He came up with the idea of sewing my mouth shut to keep me from screaming. Apparently it was distracting.”

“Oh my god,” Dean said hoarsely, but Castiel shook his head.

“There were no gods there. Just humans.”

Sam’s eyes had a faraway look, and Castiel thought that maybe, behind his barriers, he was remembering things, too.

They worked through the list one face at a time. Castiel recognized maybe one in four. Sam recognized maybe one in eight, with some overlap. He could type, much faster than Castiel, so he sat and listened while Castiel told him what he remembered. He had a great eye for detail, or so Sam said.

Dean sat with them for the first sixteen or seventeen stories, increasing amounts of disgust and anger seeping through the bond. It didn’t affect Castiel, but he could see it getting to Sam.

“Did any of them… I mean… With Sam, they were…”

The question was clear in Dean’s head, even if he couldn’t make the words come.

“You want to know if I was raped.”

Dean’s face went ash-white.

“Yeah. Did any of them…?”

“Yes.” Castiel looked to Sam. “Should I be including that? It seemed relatively minor compared to the rest.”

“Probably. I can’t guarantee anything will be done, but it’s worth mentioning.”

“Worth- _what?_ ” Dean was getting worked up about this, it was spilling through the bond and setting Castiel on edge. “What do you mean worth _mentioning_?”

“I mean,” Sam said evenly, “that Castiel’s classified as a creature, and like slaves, creatures have limits on autonomy. Probably nothing will come of it.”

“Don’t lecture me on creatures, Sam, I’m a licensed hunter. Creatures aren’t human but that doesn’t mean you can do… _this!_ ” He gestured at the laptop. “You can’t vivisect them or keep them as pets or fucking _rape_ them, _fuck!_ ”

He stood, running his hands through his hair and looking around the room like the answer to this puzzle was hidden in the décor somewhere. Castiel and Sam regarded him calmly.

“The rules don’t usually match up with the reality, Dean,” Sam said quietly, and when the older man turned back to face him, the impact on the bond was strong enough to make Sam flinch. Dean was reaching out to him, looking to surround him and protect him and keep him safe. Sam’s jaw clenched with the effort of keeping his barriers up, and Castiel looked between the two of them with curiosity.

“This upsets you.”

“Of course it upsets me! This stuff you’re saying… I wouldn’t do this shit to a _dog_ and you’re telling me that they did it to you- both of you- over and over and over and _nothing will come of it?_ ”

“We’re not people, Dean,” Sam said softly, and that was the wrong thing to say because something snapped inside him and he got very quiet.

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna go see if I can figure out anything with the cuffs.”

“Thank you,” Castiel said sincerely, and Dean retreated into his room without responding. Sam opened up the next photo.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Castiel. He's so lost.   
> Poor Dean. He has no idea.   
> [Sam is the stable one this year.](http://pm1.narvii.com/5815/81d03ccff74d7edb9218b6cb2cfaf4ac218d9e24_hq.jpg)
> 
> So I know I promised I'd have something out on Friday- I didn't lie! I didn't write a chapter but I did [make a video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQU5jdOUoxA) I accidentally did this instead of sleeping, it took me about nine hours to edit together. I actually majored in video production for a while, so hopefully it's good? It's all clips from season 1 so no spoilers. 
> 
> Then yesterday Husband made me leave the house and interact with other humans and I'm not quite over whatever it was I had, so I had to sleep it off for sixteen hours.


	33. Chapter 33

Dean was not handling this well. Every time he closed his eyes he saw it- the blood. The burns. The bruises. The nails through Castiel’s body, the lash marks on Sam.

Castiel’s voice, emotionless as he described his torture.

_We’re not people._

Something was crawling up Dean’s throat, something like rage or sadness or panic. There was white noise at the edge of his vision and he dropped down onto the bed, forcing himself to calm down.

Sam had been calm, he remembered. All those weeks ago at the police station, when he’d stripped off his clothes and let Benny photograph his scars, impassively jotting down his story in a notebook because his owner had taken his voice. If Sam could stay calm through that, he could do this.

Dean saw Alistair again, standing over Castiel with his gun raised, and Dean hadn’t even hesitated, putting a bullet through his back because Castiel was angry and hurt and _afraid_ and Dean wasn’t going to stand for that. Not for a minute.

Dean didn’t know how his life got here. How he’d gone out looking for some hired muscle and somehow ended up running some kind of broken-slave halfway house. But this was his responsibility now and hell if he was going to shirk it.

He slammed the door open, storming back into the living room and immediately regretting it when the men waiting there both flinched.

“You’re people,” he said, pointing. Sam’s face was carefully blank, while Castiel just looked amused. “You’re people, and if I ever get my hands on the fucking….”

Words failed him. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to get some kind of hold on whatever it was that was wrapping itself around his lungs and squeezing.

“I’m not that bright,” he said eventually. “But I know monsters when I see them. And the things that happened to you, were done by monsters. And they’re gonna pay for it if it’s the last damn thing I ever do.”

“Dean…” Sam shook his head, like he was trying to clear out cobwebs. “Please, don’t fixate on this.”  
“How can I _not_? How can _you_ not? How can you sit there and describe these things that have happened to you and not be a fucking mess? I’m losing my shit just _listening_ to it and you’re telling me you _lived_ through all of it and came out the other side still alive and you’re willing to just let it _go?_ ”

“I’m not letting it go,” Sam said quietly. “There’s just no point exploding over it.”

He was sitting on the couch instead of kneeling on the floor, but Dean didn’t miss the way his hands rested on his knees, perfectly still, waiting. His face went blank again, and Dean realized he was gone. He took a deep breath.

“Come back, Sam. I’m done yelling.”

“He doesn’t believe you,” Castiel supplied when a moment had passed.

“I probably wouldn’t, either,” Dean started, glancing over, but he didn’t get to finish his statement because something caught his eye. “Cas, can I see the collar again?”

Castiel stared at him a moment and then tipped his head. There it was. A jagged diamond indentation in the silver. It wasn’t a rune, and Dean had mistaken it for decoration, or just damage to the collar.

He checked the wrist cuffs and sure enough, the same jagged diamond.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and then broke into a grin. “It’s an ouroboros.”

“Do you know how to get it off?”

“No,” Dean admitted. “But it’s a start. It should at least give me a clue about how the binding works.”

He twisted the wrist band around in his hands, looking closer at the markings.

“This diamond here, it’s stylized but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a snake’s mouth. See, here’s an eye. So the band is an incarnation of the ouroboros, the snake eating it’s own tail.”

“There are two of them,” Castiel said, rotating the bangle to expose an identical marking on the opposite side.

“Huh. Okay, so that’s a little unusual. Two snakes, eating each other’s tails.”

Good, that’s good. Dean turned the bangle around again, looking over the other markings and still finding nothing that meant anything. He tried to remember what he knew about the ouroboros- witches used it as a symbol for eternity, or for the cycle of death and rebirth. Two opposing snakes meant two _different_ forces, continually feeding off and building from each other. One of the snakes probably represented the binding spell, so-

“Whatever the spell is, it’s tied into something else. We just have to figure out what that thing is. And how they’re connected. But if we can break the connection, then that should break the binding, or at least weaken it.”

Castiel didn’t respond, and when Dean glanced up, he realized the angel was staring at him. His wings were pulled high and tight, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he was a million miles away, not hearing a word Dean said, and that’s when Dean realized he was still twisting the bangle idly around the angel’s wrist.

He pulled back, dropping Castiel’s hand like it had burned him.

“So, okay. I’ll see if I can find out what the spell is tied to.”

He glanced over at Sam, who was still sitting like he was waiting for orders, though he was looking at Dean curiously. Which made sense because he’d just been fondling Castiel’s fucking hand and what the hell was _that?_

“You up for some more magic, Sam?”

Sam nodded.  

 

It seemed much longer than three days since the last time Dean had set up a spell. The purification circle in the living room was almost burned out, thanks to the effects of the hex bag from- god, had it only been the night before?

Unfortunately, the spell he was trying to do now was a little more complicated than a general purification ritual, which is how he ended up calling Charlie.

“Let me guess, the angel’s decided to kill you and you’re calling me for help from under your bed,” she quipped, picking up after two rings.

“Castiel’s fine, other than being consistently surly and condescending. I think I might have figured out something about his collar though.”

“Awesome. Do tell.”

“Do you still have the photos you took at the crime scene?”

“I’m looking at them right now.”

“There’s a jagged diamond shape that repeats on both sides, it’s on all five bangles, see it? It’s an ouroboros.”

“Are you sure? It’s kind of a leap.”

“It’s gotta be. You can see the fangs and the eye on the snake, if you look close.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”

“So the binding is feeding off something else, and I need to figure out what. I’ve got a tracking spell but it involves dropping the linked item into a fire and that’s not really going to work in this scenario.”

“Do you know anyone with Sight? They might be able to take a look for you.”

Dean closed his eyes, running through the list of people who owed him a favor. Not a psychic, seer, or medium in the bunch. He supposed he could reach out to Pamela, but their last case had gone badly and he wasn’t sure he wanted to reopen that particular can of worms.

“Not at the moment.”

“Capricious bunch, aren’t they,” Charlie remarked dryly.

“Don’t I know it.”

“You could try summoning an elemental.”

Dean frowned, considering. He tried to remember if there was any bread in the house- maybe half a loaf of store brand white stuff. It would probably do, in a pinch.

“Think they’d be able to track down the link long distance?”

“Dunno, but it’s worth a shot. I’d go for the air types, they tend to have the most range.” Charlie paused. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Not really, I mean, elementals are annoying in ideal circumstances-”

“No, I mean, with the angel. He got you hexed and then he killed people in your freakin’ yard. He’s not your responsibility. You can turn him back over to Victor, you know.”

“None of that was Cas’s fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault, either. Just… be careful, okay?”

Dean looked back into the living room, to where Sam and Castiel were still going through the photographs on Dean’s laptop.

“Yeah. I will.”

 

It turned out they had less than a quarter of a loaf of the bread, and it was a particularly shitty iteration of the store brand, so Dean gave it a miss, digging out the flour bucket and mixing bowls.

Elementals were useful but temperamental. They had to be called with a certain amount of deference and even then, they tended to wander off if you didn’t keep them engaged. Some witches kept them as familiars, but it was a tricky process and tended to backfire if your personalities didn’t match up.

“Can I help?” Sam asked, but Dean waved him off. Victor had sent another text message asking about the photos, so he guessed it was important that they finish their identification. And to be completely honest, Dean wanted them to get it over with while he was otherwise occupied. The snippets of conversation reaching him were dark enough to turn his stomach. Castiel kept sending glances his way, which meant he was pushing his weirdness through the bond which meant he was probably upsetting Sam, too, not that the freakin’ robot would ever complain-

He spilled the salt and cursed, trying to scoop the majority of it back out of the bowl. It’s not like it was going to get eaten, anyway, it was just a symbol. Castiel looked over, curious, but Dean just glowered at him.

He stirred the excess salt into the dough, kneading it twice with flour-coated hands before tossing it onto a tray.

“That’s gonna take an hour to bake, and we should try to do the summoning as fast as possible after that. The fresher it is, the more cooperative the elemental will be.”

 

The next hour was, in a word, weird.

The house filled with the smell of baking bread while Dean set up the spell. The circle in this case was filled with a four-pointed star, arranged to coincide with the cardinal directions. There were candles at each point, three white and one red, positioned toward the West to indicate the preference for an air elemental. Four small mirrors were set up around the red candle, facing inward and reflecting each other, indicating a request for information.

Around the outside of the circle, Dean etched a containment spell in chalk. The spell was weak, its primary goal was to assist the elemental in maintaining a corporeal form, rather than actually working to capture and hold the spirit. All but the weakest elementals would be able to break free from the circle easily.

And, just because it had worked well for him in the past, Dean put a line of peppermint oil up the inside of each of the white candles. Elementals tended to be very tactile creatures, and the strong scent tended to attract them and make them more comfortable in the space.

All the while Sam and Castiel were clicking through the photographs that Victor had sent them. Each time Castiel said “no” Dean’s breath came a little easier, but when he said “yes” the stories that followed made Dean’s blood run cold. Sam listened impassively, asking questions to clarify and typing out Cas’s words.

Dean forced himself to stay, and listen, and shut up, though Castiel’s repeated glances told him all he needed to know about how well he was staying stoic.

But god dammit, he was gonna do this. He was gonna stay right here and set up his summoning and not lose his shit.

Sam closed the last photo after forty minutes, and the three of them just sat there in silence. Dean had long since finished marking out the containment circle and now he was just sitting there, trying to process.

After a while he realized that there was a light cool pressure in his chest, just below his breastbone, and when he thought about it, he realized it was Cas, pushing _calm_ into the bond.

“Am I that obvious?”

Castiel nodded, meeting his eyes. Dean sighed.

“Sorry. I know I’m probably making it worse for you both.”

He reached out, trying to find Sam and coming back with nothing.

“He’s closed us both off, I’m not sure why,” Castiel supplied, and Sam looked up sharply. Dean looked away, remembering the night before. When Sam had thrown the bond wide open and he’d responded by panicking and running.

“I closed it because I think I know what I look like, to you. Why neither of you can look at me.” Sam’s voice was low. “All this stuff, it disgusts both of you, but I was good at it. I didn’t just live through it, I _excelled_ at it. Whatever they asked of me I gave, I was obedient and dignified and I knew my place. More than I know it now, because ever since I’ve come here, all I’ve done is _fuck up.”_ He gestured to Dean. “ I fucked it up for you and I fucked it up for Cas and I think maybe I belonged with them more than I belong with you.”

Sam glanced up at him then, calm hazel eyes meeting Dean’s horrified gaze. “I think maybe they realized something you haven’t yet.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you don’t belong with them.”

Sam shook his head, dropping his eyes and going straight back into his training, sliding onto his knees and leaning forward, his hands flat on the floor and his head down.

“Please, Dean. I tried making this work and I failed. I can’t _be_ a person and it was wrong of me to try.” Sam risked a glance up at Dean, his face pleading. “Last night, I was good, right? That’s what I can do right, it’s what I’ve been good for, just let me do it and stop being so angry about the way things _are._ ”

“But that’s _not_ how things are! It’s how they were and they shouldn’t have been that way!”

Sam just shook his head, looking down at his hands. His shoulders were tense.

“I’ll stop talking about it,” he said evenly. “I didn’t realize what it was doing to you and I should have. I won’t say anything else about it and we can forget it. _Please,_ Dean. I can be so much better than I have been, just _let me._ ”

“What do you think we see?” Castiel asked before Dean could formulate a response to that.

“I don’t think I want to know,” Sam whispered. “Something broken.”

Castiel frowned and Sam flinched away from him like he’d been struck.

“What are you- _ah!_ ”

Sam clutched at his head, fingers buried in his hair.

“What are you doing, stop it!” Dean reached for the angel but Castiel evaded him easily. The collar sparked but Sam had already relaxed, his hands returning to the floor and his breath coming heavy.

“Cas, what the fuck did you just do,” Dean deadpanned. Castiel wasn’t looking at him. Instead he was peering at Sam, head tilted slightly to one side.

“I was looking for something,” he said absently.

“What?” Dean asked, at the same time Sam said “I hate it when you do that.”

“Whatever it is that Sam seems to think is inside him. The broken thing.” Castiel frowned. “I don’t see it.”

“You saw it before,” Sam said. “It’s why you couldn’t hold the bond unless I was handcuffed. Because there was something inside me that scared you. And Dean-” Sam’s voice caught. “Dean saw it too. When I tried to open the bond to him. I don’t know what it is and I’m sorry and I’ll learn to keep it closed, I swear, I’m trying, I just-”

His breath caught again and he stopped, drawing a slow breath. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I made you open the bond, it was a mistake and you’re the ones paying for it. And I’m gonna keep doing it, keep making mistakes-”

“That’s _life,_ ” Dean interrupted, and Sam looked up at him, eyes widening. “You make mistakes. People get hurt. You scare Cas? Big deal. I let my dad put off doctor’s appointments for eight months because I didn’t want to have an argument over it. He could be alive now if I’d had a little more backbone. At least you did what you did for a good reason. I was just a coward.”

He fixed Sam with a level stare.

“Know what I saw in you? I saw the way you looked at _me,_ and it freaked me out because I’m not what you see. And I can’t live up to that, Sam.”

Sam had nothing to say to that, just continued waiting on his knees, not meeting Dean’s eyes. Castiel was looking back and forth between the two of them with a look Dean couldn’t even begin to decipher.

“All this from one bond. It’s no wonder humans never learned to communicate properly.”

“Okay, you know what-” Dean started, but Castiel was just shaking his head with a sardonic smile.

“I do know. The moment I saw him I said you were his master.”

“I’m _not._ ” Dean snapped.

“I think you are,” Sam said, still addressing the floor. “I don’t think I can help it.”

Dean looked back and forth between the two of them, realizing for the first time how utterly in over his head he was.

“Okay. We can work on this. Sam, please, just, get off the floor. Please?”

Sam complied immediately, rising languidly to his feet.

The oven _dinged_ and Dean was friggin saved by the bell because he had no idea how to even _begin_ to address this.

“Okay,” he said, clapping his hands. “Let’s call us an elemental.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter was really hard to write. 
> 
> I went back and edited it and re-wrote it about a dozen times and I'm still not really sure it's fitting together the way it should. But at some point you gotta push it out and move on, right? 
> 
> During this exceptionally-long hiatus I also started moving the story into StoryMill, which is a program for managing novels and hopefully it's gonna help me keep my shit straight a little better than the 350-page word document I'm working with right now. One of the things I've realized is that the tone and character development is flying all over the place (April Fool's chapter notwithstanding) and this is definitely not the cohesive document I want it to be. I'm building this universe as I go along but I'm trying really hard not to fall into the deux ex machina trap of "oh yeah I forgot this super-useful thing ALSO exists, I'm going to mention it now just as we need it." 
> 
> It always amused me when writers said things like "oh I keep all my character details in a notebook or on post-its" and my reaction has always been "what do you mean you can't remember the details of your own book, you wrote it!" but it's easy to say that when I just read the book over two days and the details are all fresh in my mind. At this point there are two months between the first chapter and me, and I can vaguely remember touching on a topic at some point once maybe? CMD+F to the rescue. 
> 
> What I'm realizing is that when the story is over it's going to need a complete overhaul and republish so in that regard, thank ya'll for being my first-draft beta readers. I love you all. Unfortunately the massive size of this overhaul is turning my one-shot porn-with-plot into a massive and frankly intimidating Project and my normal strategy for dealing with Projects is to hide under my covers until it's been so long everyone's forgotten they asked me to do it in the first place. Thus the long chapter wait. 
> 
> Fortunately I procrastinated by working on other Supernatural-related projects including [a season 2 video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSlQI8XBQSw) which I did in Final Cut Pro instead of iMovie so it's a slightly more polished final product.


	34. Chapter 34

So normally when you call an elemental you’ve got about an eighty percent chance of getting the kind you asked for. It really depends on who’s around and what kind of state they’re in. Earth elementals are the hardest to summon because they’re generally lethargic and move at a slower pace than the rest of the world, making them great witnesses if you need to know the history of an area, but also pretty terrible about communicating in a lively manner. Fire elementals, on the other hand, almost always show up when called and are most likely to show up when the preferred spirit doesn’t. Fire elementals have been known to appear when the summoning wasn’t for an elemental _at all,_ if they were in the area and in the mood.

So when Dean called an air elemental and didn’t get one, he was expecting a fire elemental. Or at the very least a water.

What he _wasn’t_ expecting was the little creature sitting in the middle of the circle, munching on the tribute biscuit and not looking too pleased about it.

“Think you got enough salt there, bucko?” the thing asked him with it’s mouth full. “Word to the wise? Sugar. Tastes way better, gets you a much higher quality- _hel-lo,_ what are _you_ then?” The elemental jumped to his feet, looking Castiel over with a suggestive grin befitting a man far taller than eighteen inches. He waggled his eyebrows and Dean covered a grin. Castiel just stared, his head tipped slightly to one side.

The little guy left the circle, suffering no loss in form as he crossed over the warding. He didn’t seem to notice at all, just circled Castiel once, taking in the wings and dirty jeans, and stopped in front of him with his hands on his tiny hips. As far as Dean could see, he was wearing some kind of tiny toga.

“Aren’t _you_ a tall drink of water?” he asked, and Dean laughed. He couldn’t help it. Whoever he was, this diminutive non-elemental was just the weird cherry on top of his weird-ass sundae of a day, and fuckit, he was laughing.

“Watch it, pal,” the not-elemental said, sending a glare Dean’s way. “It’s not the size, it’s how you use it.”

Dean laughed so hard his stomach cramped and Sam started to look concerned.

“I’m told you can help me with this,” Castiel said, addressing the tiny man. He tugged at the collar and the little creature didn’t bother craning his neck. He took a running leap onto Castiel’s leg and proceeded to shimmy up the denim until he reached hip-height and ran out of cloth.

“Gonna need a boost, here, Gulliver,” he said, when Castiel made no motion to lift him higher.

“My name is Castiel,” the angel said, reaching for the creature sitting in his pocket.

“Nice to meetcha, I’m Gabe,” Gabe replied, launching himself onto Castiel’s hand and wrapping himself bodily around one long finger.

Dean couldn’t breathe. Sam was shifting his weight back like he thought he might have to fight someone but he wasn’t sure who.

Gabe climbed up onto Castiel’s shoulder, holding a fistful of dark hair to keep his balance. He gave the collar a quick once-over.

“Nope. Stronger magic than mine, I’m afraid. And _way_ stronger than the elemental you were _trying_ to summon.” Gabe glanced over to where Dean was catching his breath, then turned back to Cas and stage-whispered “ _Your witch might not know what he’s doing.”_

“I know you can’t break it,” Dean said. “I was hoping you could tell us what it’s tethered to.”

“Hmmm,” Gabe said, plopping down onto Castiel’s shoulder and twisting the massive silver band in his hands. “You got some weird shit here, that’s for damn sure,” he said cheerily. “What did you say you were?”  
“I’m a seraph.”

Gabe let out a low whistle.

“Angel, huh? Weeeell that explains a lot. Means I finally get the chance to ask…” he leaned in and whispered something in Castiel’s ear. Cas looked confused.

“I did not fall, I was pulled here from my own realm. And manifesting a physical vessel was somewhat unpleasant, but it did not hurt, no.”

Gabe blinked, like that wasn’t the answer he was expecting. Dean grinned.

“Did you just ask him if it hurt when he fell from heaven?”

“Once in a lifetime opportunity!” Gabe protested. Castiel huffed.

“This is pointless.”

“Hey, hold your horses there. Just having a little fun. As a matter of fact,” the little man said, “I _do_ know what the collar is bound to. And I will tell you for a very reasonable payment.”

“I thought that’s what the bread was for,” Castiel grumbled.

“Nope! That’s just the appearance fee. Information is extra.”

“What do you want?”

Gabe raised his eyebrows at Dean.

“Can’t tell you yet; don’t know for sure. A favor. I’ll come find you when I need it.”

“I’ll deal,” Sam said quietly from his place in the kitchen. Castiel slowly turned to face him.

“The benefit is mine,” the angel said. Sam shrugged.

“Hold up. Nobody’s dealing. We don’t even know what you _are_ ,” Dean protested.

“I’d think _that_ was obvious,” Gabe said, dropping down to sit easily on Castiel’s bare shoulder. “I’m an incubus.”

Dean blinked.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to be…. bigger?”

“It’s how you _use it_ , pal,” the tiny demon repeated. “Do you want to know what’s got feathers all tied up, or not?”

“Yes,” Sam said deliberately, and Gabe grinned and said “done” before Dean could protest.

“Though I do wish it had been you,” he said wistfully, draping himself dramatically across Castiel’s trapezius. The angel’s wing twitched outwards, and Dean was reminded of a horse flicking off a fly.

“You came here through a gateway, right? Somebody poked a hole from our realm into yours and yoinked you right through.”

“We already knew that,” Castiel said icily.

“Yeah, but do you know who opened it?”

“… no,” Castiel admitted.

“Well, that’s where you wanna start. Somebody’s got a nice little spot of magic holding it steady and _that’s_ what the spell’s tied to. If you wanna lose the bling, the portal’s gotta get gone.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard. You know how to do that, right Cas?”

“No, I don’t,” Castiel snapped, picking the demon off his shoulder and dropping him onto the couch. “I can prevent passage between realms, but without knowing how the portal was originally opened, I don’t know how to destroy it.”

“So we need to figure out who opened it, and how.”

“Alistair,” Sam murmured. “And the rest of his people.” He gestured to the laptop, indicating the photos he and Cas had been going through. “If they’re the ones who trapped Cas, then it stands to reason that they’re the ones who summoned him here.”

“Handsome _and_ smart,” Gabe quipped, looking like he was considering a change of location.

“So we wait for Naomi to pull one of those dicks in, and grill them for info. Once they tell us how the portal was opened, we destroy it and everyone goes home happy.”

Dean grinned. This was going to be easy.

 

It wasn’t easy, and what’s more, it was getting considerably more difficult with each passing development.

The first thing Dean did (after releasing a somewhat-regretful Gabe from his summons) was call Victor, to tell him what they’d learned. Only it turns out that Victor had been yanked off the case- Sam’s email had been forwarded straight along to Naomi, the federal agent in charge of the investigation. From what Victor could gather, they were pulling together investigations from around half the country, pinning them to the organization Dean had dubbed the Hellfire club. Victor had sent everything he had over to Naomi and gotten exactly nothing in return. Apparently the government wasn’t in a sharing mood.

If they’d had one clubhouse, or two, he might have suggested heading over with a dowsing rod to see if they could seek it out that way, but by the sounds of it, there were dozens, not to mention people’s private homes and businesses and holdings and who knew what else.

Dean rubbed his temples.

Okay. So it was big. But not impossible, and he had a lot of allies. Plus an angel, not for nothing.

 _They,_ he amended. _They_ had a lot of allies, because this was about Sam more than it was about him, and that brought him back around to the uncomfortable topic of What to Do About Sam.

Because Sam was regressing and Dean didn’t need a shrink to tell him that. Dean thought they’d been making progress and then all of a sudden it’s like someone had flipped a switch and Sam had regressed into his please-fuck-me deferential slave mode. It was problematic for several reasons.

Dean called Naomi, changing the subject in his own mind, but the call went to voicemail. He left his number, asking for a callback, and when he hung up he realized Sam was standing in the doorway. For a moment it looked like he was glowing, and Dean realized he’d been reaching out through the bond.

“Do you need anything?”

“Nah,” Dean said with a shrug. And then for the first time, he saw the quick tense-relax of Sam’s shoulders when he heard the answer. “That’s not the question you were asking, was it?”

This time it was Sam’s turn to shrug.

“They- the owners- they use different words, don’t they.” It wasn’t a question. “They say something, they mean something else.”

“Sometimes.”

Dean thought back, all the times in the last weeks that Sam had offered help and been waved off.

“What are you asking me?”

“Where you want me to be.” Sam paused. “Normally I’d wait by your side, but you don’t like it when I’m on the floor.”

Dean sat on the edge of the bed.

“Where do you want to be?”

“Do you want the truth?”

Dean swallowed. “Of course.”

“Here. I want to be here. But on a minute to minute basis? I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be or what you want me to do or what you expect from me.” The words were coming out in a rush now, Sam’s eyes fixed on the floor as he spoke. “Sometimes I get lost in a task, or I wake up and I panic because I haven’t done my duties and even when I don’t know what they are, I know they’re _something_ and I know I haven’t done them. I know you want me here for a reason and if I knew what the reason _was_ I could do it better, but you won’t tell me. I was supposed to help you on hunts but now you’re leaving me behind. I’m not even useful as your lover.”

Sam paused, and Dean could see him fighting the urge to drop again.

“Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I wish you’d just punish me, so I could learn to do better. Or so I could know what it was like, so I could stop being afraid.”

He winced as he said the last part, like he was expecting this to be the thing that finally sent Dean over the edge. Dean closed his eyes.

“If you… if you were saying this to your owner, you wouldn’t be standing.”

Sam shook his head.

“What… how would you do it?”

Sam took a step toward the bed, then folded easily to his knees. His hands he laid in front of him, leaning forward until his forehead rested on his fingers. Dean remembered this. From the night Sam had told him about Azazel.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. Dean took a breath.

“And if I- if your owner- if they wanted to give you what you asked for. What do you do then?”

Sam’s body stilled, even his breath stopping as he processed Dean’s words. But then he looked up at Dean, his face only a few inches from Dean’s knee.

“Then I would give thanks. In whatever way seemed appropriate.”

Sam’s eyes dropped meaningfully to Dean’s waist, and Dean closed his eyes again. Sam was asking him to be punished and promising him a blowjob if he agreed to do it and christ, that was ten kinds of fucked up.

“Why does it frighten you, that I won’t punish you?”

Sam’s voice was distressingly level as he answered.

“Because I don’t know what you’d do.”

“What do you think I’d do?”

Sam’s eyes widened slightly before he got himself under control.

“I don’t know. You haven’t done anything at all for weeks. I’m afraid that when I finally push you over the edge you’ll be driven to something extreme. Not that I can’t handle it,” he added quickly. “But I don’t know what will trigger it and I don’t know when it will come.”

“So this whole time, you’ve been expecting me to hurt you?”

Sam hesitated.

“Not the whole time. At first. And then for a while I thought I could be what you wanted, and I forgot my training and I slipped. And I’ve been getting worse and worse and I know I’m running on borrowed time.”

Sam looked up at him, just a brief flash of hazel before he forced his gaze back down to the floor.  

“Please, just tell me what it will be, when it comes.”

“I told you when I bought you, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Sam shook his head.

“I’ve never had an owner that didn’t find it necessary to punish me. I haven’t gotten better just because I’ve been sold again.”

“I’m not-” Dean paused. He’d been echoing this sentiment since Victor had first told Sam he was free. And as many times as he repeated it, it didn’t seem to get any truer. He remembered that day, all those weeks ago in the hotel room, when Sam had fallen asleep next to him and he’d suddenly realized the enormity of what he’d bought. And maybe once it was bought, it couldn’t just be gotten rid of. Sam and Castiel seemed to think so.

“What do you think it should be?”

Sam almost glanced back up, but caught himself.

“I hurt Cas,” he said slowly. “I marked him and I forced him to open a bond.”

“You saved his life.”

“He didn’t want me to, and you were angry with me. But he’s a creature, so…” Sam’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know the rules for creatures. But if slaves hurt each other, usually they’d starve us. Just for a few days. They said it took the fight out of us.”

Dean swallowed.

“Okay.”

“I’m not good at being a free man. I’ve been argumentative and difficult to handle and I can’t even fuck you the way you want.”

“I’ve told you, it’s not about what I want.”

“You want me to want it, and I don’t know how.”

“What about yesterday?” Dean asked slowly.

“Someone hexed your house because of me,” Sam said miserably. “I wouldn’t even know how to _start_ devising a punishment for that, but you didn’t do anything. It’s just one more thing on top of the _mountain_ of things I owe you for, and I don’t have anything else to give.”

“Sam-”

“Don’t,” Sam whispered, leaning forward and letting his forehead rest against Dean’s thigh. “Please, don’t. I don’t have anything else to give you. I don’t have any other way to apologize. Anywhere else, just the broken window would have earned me a whipping but you won’t do _anything_ and I keep ending up more and more and more in your debt.”

“Alistair broke the window, and he’s dead. If anything, he was here for Cas, not you, and Cas fixed the window, so it’s all fine. Nobody owes a debt.”

Dean put his hand out, stroking Sam’s hair back and trying not to feel like he was petting a dog. Sam didn’t say anything and Dean realized his jaw was trembling.

“Sam?”

“Please, can I ask for something?”

“Of course.”

“When it comes. When I push you over the edge finally. Because I will.” Sam took a deep breath. “Please don’t hold me under water. I won’t fight if you do, but please. Anything but that.”

“I promise,” Dean said, and Sam nodded.

“Thank you. You don’t seem like the type, but it helps to know.”

“What type do I seem like?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“You’d use your fists, probably. Before you even thought about it. And you’d probably apologize afterward.” Sam paused. “Some owners liked the ritual of it, thought it helped the lesson sink in, if we knew it was coming. Like the man who liked to push my head under water.” Sam licked his lips. “We’d watch the tub fill. But you don’t seem like the type to plan it, that way.”

“No,” Dean agreed weakly, and that seemed to satisfy Sam.

“Thank you,” he said, laying his cheek against Dean’s thigh.

“I can tell you something else?” Dean cleared his throat. He hadn’t meant it to come out as a question. “I’m not gonna hit you. But if I did. You’d see it coming. I’m not just gonna crack you in the kidneys when your back’s turned.”

“Thank you,” Sam said again, and now his hand was wrapped gently around Dean’s calf and he was looking up at him with those bright hazel eyes-

There was a ring of copper light there, and for just a moment, Dean could see him, really _see_ him, but then Sam’s jaw tensed and it was like someone had slammed a door. The light was gone.

“It was an accident,” he said tensely. “May I go?”

“You don’t need to ask,” Dean answered, but Sam just shook his head with a smile.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is part Forcing The Plot to Progress (which I am not good at) and part Exploring Sam's Trauma (which flows from my fingers like calligraphy from the finest fountain pen). I hope you liked it. 
> 
>  
> 
> Momma Kitty had her kittens, they are two weeks old, have their eyes open, and are incredibly loud for how small they are. 
> 
> I made a [Wincestiel/TFW Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCuo2G3pbwc) set to a Britney Spears song because I have lost control of my life. It's significantly better than the others. Husband's takeaway was "they _are_ pretty." 
> 
> Also Sam owes a favor to an incubus and I don't know yet how this is going to come into play later, but I know it's going to.   
> Gabe is another character that just Showed Up and Did Things. I didn't mean to summon him. It was going to be a fire elemental but then, no. Gabe. And then I couldn't make him focus because he was hitting on Cas, and then he wouldn't fork over info unless there was something in it for him, and of COURSE Sam's gonna be all self-sacrificing.


	35. Chapter 35

Over the days that followed, Sam began to realize that keeping the bond closed was a full time task. It was like trying to keep a bubble from breaching the surface of the water- he could catch it, force it down, but it was always searching out cracks, seeping through any weakness, seeping upwards.

It was the worst when he was asleep.

During the day, he was learning new ways of keeping his mind controlled. It had been easier when he’d been expected to keep his body poised and still, but most of those requirements were gone, now. He wasn’t a sex slave anymore and in any case, it tended to upset Dean when he came into the living room and found Sam conversing with Cas from a position on the floor.

Castiel, to his credit, was utterly indifferent to Sam’s choice of seating, even seemed to prefer it when the larger man took a subservient stance. Castiel still tended to flinch at sudden movements, keep his distance from the two of them, but if Sam could keep still and stay back, the angel proved an excellent conversational partner.

Without the constant attention to physical details, though, Sam found his mind and his focus drifting, and that was when the bond tended to slip open. Castiel would usually let him know, reaching out through the link to settle gently against Sam’s side. He wasn’t angry, or reproachful, just there, and Sam appreciated that.

Sometimes, though, Sam slipped so far that even Dean started to notice. And it was easy to tell when Dean had noticed. Castiel moved through the link like a dancer, sure-footed and quiet, but Dean was a bull in a china shop, blundering through the bond and slamming into Sam’s side with something that might have been enthusiasm or just plain velocity. ­

These moments left Sam scared, because he couldn’t afford to be that oblivious, not with the bond, not with anything.

With that in mind, he began modifying his training.

It was hard, taking Dean’s preferences into account, not just because of his obvious distaste for several of Sam’s expectations, but for his general obliviousness regarding some of the others. Sam was used to waiting, perched on his knees, meditating, waiting for his owner to need him. In some ways, trained slaves doubled as ornamentation, something lovely for their owners to look at while they attended to other business. The owners understood that holding a position indefinitely was impossible, and would periodically give their slaves small tasks, giving them an excuse to attend to bodily needs.

The waiting was a relatively easy behavior to transfer, except that Dean didn’t realize what was happening, and didn’t see fit to send Sam on errands or dismiss him. It went against everything that Sam had learned to simply stand up and walk out of the room unexcused, but his mind’s ability to override his body’s needs was not absolute.

He began to watch Dean closely while he waited, trying to anticipate something the hunter might need. Even if he couldn’t identify anything obvious, he made a point never to come back from an unexcused absence without some token- a glass of water, a book, a jacket, a tool.

The way he offered these to Dean must have raised flags in the older man’s mind, because he would take them hesitantly, searching Sam’s face for something that Sam made very sure was not there.

If Sam was too obvious about his attentions, Dean told him to ‘go outside or something’ and after a few days of that, Sam started taking runs. At first he was afraid to go too far, in case he was called and couldn’t hear to respond. Once he got out of earshot, he had trouble shaking the feeling that he wasn’t allowed to be where he was. On the rare occasions that he encountered other people, he had a tendency to run his fingers over the obscured barcode, lest someone see it and wonder what he was doing out alone.

If they did notice, they didn’t mention anything, and he started making it a point to go a little farther every day. He’d come back pleasantly exhausted and clear headed, and it helped him keep from fidgeting when he settled back next to Dean again.

 

Sometimes, after Dean sent him away, Sam tried to learn to cook.

Dean didn’t eat on a regular schedule, instead wandering into the kitchen when he felt like it. Occasionally he cooked up a large meal whose components might or might not correspond to the meal typically eaten at that time of day. He’d told Sam early on that the kitchen was free game, and that he should help himself whenever he was hungry.

Sam amended it to twice daily, once at mid-day and once in the evening. If Dean was up and cooking in the morning, he’d eat then, too, but only if Dean offered.

Castiel watched all this with interest. He didn’t eat and he showed no interest in starting, but he did have a weird sort of fascination with the process. Sam was in the kitchen every day like clockwork, and more often than not, Castiel was there waiting. Sam had almost no experience making food, but the laptop provided helpful instructions and he managed not to ruin too many meals.

As far as the angel was concerned, the rules were both arbitrarily and baffling. Some ingredients were boiled, some were fried, some were baked. Some were eaten hot, some cold, some lukewarm. Some were eaten raw, some were cooked and then cooled. Some were wet, some were dry, some had sauce, some were plain, some were seasoned. Castiel believed that the seasonings were a form of witchcraft, and Sam’s attempt to explain the difference between sweet and sour and spicy and salty did nothing to persuade him otherwise. He didn’t understand how sugar could be added in cups but a teaspoon of salt rendered most things inedible.

The more Sam tried to explain it, the more questions Castiel had, until Sam had finally given up and suggested that the seraph start eating his own food if he was so curious. Castiel wrinkled his nose and managed to go nearly two hours without asking any more questions.

Dean, in the meantime, was growing ever more frustrated with the lack of communication from Naomi. Victor and Charlie hadn’t gotten much from her either, just requests for clarification made through official channels. She was adamantly refusing to take Dean’s calls, and attempts to contact her office just routed him back to the same voicemail boxes as her direct numbers.

It had the unfortunate effect of stalling the investigation into the Hellfire club and the possible location of their portal, which seemed to be upsetting Dean a lot more than it was upsetting Castiel. The angel seemed sure that if the gateway was being meddled with, he’d know. As long as no one was trying to actively pass through, he was content to leave it alone. His interest in the case seemed to revolve primarily around revenge, and when Dean had asked why he was dawdling around with spice racks, Castiel had fixed him with a level stare and replied that he was very old and very, very patient.

Sam liked to think that if he were to get as old as Castiel, he would be like a redwood, calm and still and wise. In Castiel, it manifested as a restless sort of curiosity, a disinclination to focus on any one thing and a marked inability to separate the important from the mundane.

Once or twice a day, Dean and Cas would settle onto the living room floor and set up a transfer. Sam stayed on the sidelines for this, watching as the two of them went still, their eyes locked, their breathing slowly synchronizing. Afterward he’d make sure that Dean made it to the bedroom to sleep off the after effects. Sam knew that he wasn’t going to be any use for the transfers, not with the bond shored up the way it was, but he could get Dean through the aftermath, if nothing else.

Castiel was quiet during these times, his feathers ruffling gently, shivers running down the length of his body as he adjusted to the influx of energy. He would sit quietly and watch Sam watching Dean, his forehead furrowed like he was trying to figure something out but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

There wasn’t much that Sam couldn’t explain to Castiel, given time and appropriate metaphors. The angel was both interested in and baffled by a system of government in which authority figures were trusted to mete out justice on another’s behalf. Idioms proved no small source of amusement, as did the revelation that over his million years of observation, the angel had somehow missed the existence of _seasons._ When Sam had pressed, Cas simply shrugged and said that he wasn’t completely oblivious; he’d noticed the ice ages.

Sam tried to ask him about historical events, things he’d seen mankind do or develop, a subject on which the angel was disappointingly unversed. He’d checked in on humans a few dozen times, but he couldn’t provide specifics on where or when. When Sam insisted he must remember _something_ , Castiel fixed him with a level stare and asked if Sam was familiar with the intricacies of the rather advanced anthill that was being constructed on the north side of the driveway.

“They have wars, you know,” the angel had provided dryly, and Sam had been forced to concede the point.

For all his sarcasm and casual superiority, Sam discovered that Cas was terrible at poker. Dean could usually beat both of them, but when it came to Sam and Cas, Sam never lost. Something about the value system of near-identical cards was lost on the seraph, no matter how Sam tried to explain it. Cas played him anyway, losing again and again.

Sometimes, Cas would ask him about sex. Usually this happened right after Sam and Dean had had some interlude, though on occasion, it happened while Dean was in the shower, leading Sam to the conclusion that the seraph was getting his information (such as it was) straight from Dean’s mind.

Sam didn’t have a good explanation for why humans would engage in non-procreative sex, so he just shrugged and explained that it felt nice. Castiel was dubious but Sam insisted that it really was great. After all, people had bought him just to fuck him, so there had to be something to it.

And in retrospect, with that kind of explanation as the only thing to go on, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when Castiel leaned down off the couch and kissed him.

It was right after an energy transfer and Dean was dead to the world, leaving Sam and Castiel with a good twenty minutes of solitude. They normally spent the time talking about one thing or another, Castiel with his wings spread out across the back of the couch and Sam perched on his knees on the floor because Dean wasn’t there to tell him not to. This time, Cas had been unusually quiet, watching Sam with a silent regard that he didn’t quite know what to do with.

And then he’d just leaned down, catching Sam’s jaw in his hand, drawing him in.

Sam opened for him easily, his tongue flicking against the angel’s lip, inviting. Castiel didn’t take it, just pressed his lips to Sam’s mouth.

And then he withdrew, looking at Sam with a frown.

“I think I’m missing it,” he said evenly, and Sam’s stomach turned to ice because whatever Castiel was feeling, it wasn’t what he expected. And he’d expected something good.

“I can be better.” The words came out in a rush. He _could_ be better. Castiel shook his head and Sam’s heart sank. He leaned up, pressing his mouth to the angel’s, biting gently at his lower lip and bringing one hand up to card through his hair. Castiel froze, his hands on Sam’s shoulders, ready to push the larger man away. Sam pressed again, delving between Cas’s parted lips, remembering everything Abaddon had ever taught him. He could do this. He had this.

“Let me,” he murmured, and Cas relaxed just slightly. Blue-white flickered against the edge of the bond, warm and hopeful and Sam slammed it shut, cursing himself for letting his concentration drop.

Castiel pushed him away.

Sam’s eyes dropped, he fell easily back into his position on the floor, kicking himself.

“I’m sorry-” he started, but Castiel waved him off.

“It’s not what I thought,” the angel said absently, and Sam felt heat pricking behind his eyes. He grit his teeth, keeping his gaze on the floor. Slaves didn’t have pride, he reminded himself. He was wanted or he wasn’t, all he needed to do was respond. If Cas didn’t want him, then he needed to _sit down_ and _be quiet_ and _keep the bond closed-_

“This bothers you.”

“I’m fine.”

Castiel leaned down again, catching his chin and forcing his face up. Blue eyes regarded him questioningly.

“You want this,” the angel observed, and suddenly Sam understood what Dean had been trying to tell him, all these weeks.

_I want you to want this._

“I’m good at it. I _need_ to be good at it.”

Castiel’s eyes searched his face, looking for something more, but there was nothing more to offer, Sam didn’t _have_ anything else, that’s why this was so important-

Castiel kissed him again, open and warm, and Sam let him. The angel’s lips were soft, pressed easily against his, and Sam knew how to do this, this is what he _did-_

“There!” Cas said, pulling back slightly, his eyes widening, and then he was crashing back down onto Sam, hard and insistent. Sam’s hands rose, tangling in his hair, nails scraping over the nape of his neck. Something tickled at the base of Sam’s back, and he realized that the angel’s wings had encircled him. Castiel was desperate, hungry, and Sam wondered, distantly, what had changed.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Sam. He just wants someone to tell him what to do. :( 
> 
> I tried and tried and tried to get this chapter to ten pages. It just. wasn't. happening. This plot development felt so incredibly forced, every word was like pulling teeth. I know it's been terrible for you; hopefully your patience has been adequately rewarded. 
> 
> Next chapter: Castiel tell us what has changed, Dean makes himself a Coping Sandwich. The hunt for red Naomi continues.


	36. Chapter 36

The physical sensation was one thing.

Sam’s body was hot and yielding, opening up and offering, and Castiel had to admit that it was appealing in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

But that wasn’t what he was after.

Castiel had been watching the two humans interact for weeks and while Sam kept himself locked in and silent, Dean was making efforts to be boisterous enough for the two of them. Visceral pleasures inspired a colorful sort of poetry in Dean, everything from sex to showers to sandwiches compelled the older man’s mind to song.

But it was different – _always_ different- when he did this.

There was no purpose to it, not that Castiel could see. To the best of his knowledge nothing actually passed between the men when they touched. Nothing substantial, in any case. They didn’t do it often, and they didn’t do it predictably, but when they did, there was nothing like it.

For some reason, Sam- doing this to Sam, getting this from Sam- made Dean _happy_ in a way Castiel hadn’t seen from anything else.

He wanted it.

The first time he’d kissed the human, there hadn’t been anything, just the warm feel of skin on his own. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t anything close to what he’d felt from Dean. There was a little flicker of feeling, and he reached out against Sam’s defenses, skirting along the edges, but the man only responded by shutting down harder.

Cas gave up, settling back onto the couch and resigning it, somewhat disappointedly, to just another unfathomable human quirk.

He’d expected Sam to tolerate him, to humor his curiosity the way the man did with the other customs he’d taken to explaining.

He hadn’t expected Sam to look quite so… broken.

And he _was_ broken, Castiel realized, looking at the kneeling figure before him. Disappointed. Almost ashamed. Sam, for whatever reason, wanted this from him.

Castiel kissed him again, and there it was. That feeling, inside him. Not as strong as what Dean had felt, not as vibrant, but it was there. One tiny little spark of light.

He pulled Sam closer, hands tangling in his shirt and holding him close. He realized belatedly that his wings had encircled the man, and he shouldn’t do that, it wasn’t safe, he needed to pull back.

He didn’t pull back.

His feathers pressed a line up the center of Sam’s back, holding him flush, and Sam was making little noises, _happy_ noises, though the bond was still locked down.

These- the things Castiel was doing- made Sam happy, and when Castiel realized that, the spark of light bloomed stronger.

And it was… good. He didn’t have another word for it. Pointless, but the vessel liked it, and it was nice to find _something_ the vessel liked. Mostly it was just, as Dean put it a ‘pain in the ass.’ An idiom which literally had not applied before.

Surprise bloomed through the bond, surprise bordering on shock and then a flicker of sadness and for a moment Castiel thought that Sam had opened the bond after all. But no.

“Hello, Dean,” he said quietly, regarding the figure in the darkened hallway. Dean was frozen, like he’d been caught somewhere he shouldn’t be, which was ridiculous- it was his house. But the surprise was giving way to a slow-burning discomfort, a general unease obvious enough that even Sam picked it up.

“Can I get you something?”

Dean shook his head.

“Nah, I’m just- I was, uh… I’m gonna make some food. You guys want…?”

Sam blinked at him, his expression neutral. Castiel noticed his weight shifting back, his hands creeping toward his knees. Whatever they’d been doing, the moment had passed.

“Do you need help?” Sam asked.

“I’m good,” Dean responded. He was smiling now, his big smile, the one he used when he was trying to tell someone else that everything is fine. He was collecting sandwich ingredients and his movements were quick, deliberate. “So, you guys, huh? Good for you.”

Castiel frowned. Dean was being vague again. He glanced at Sam, but the other human was equally confused.

He reached out gently through the bond, trying to feel out a meaning.

Dean jumped at the contact, flinching back. The knife he’d been holding clattered to the floor, and he swore. His mind was filled with an image, the image of Sam and Castiel as they’d been a moment ago, and the reaction surrounding it was chaotic to say the least. Genuine happiness mixed with genuine sadness, regret, relief, half a dozen other things that Castiel couldn’t identify. He shook his head, pulling back from Dean’s mind.

Humans.

So needlessly complicated.

“So I’ve got a job,” Dean said suddenly, retrieving his knife and tossing it into the sink. “Couple of spriggans Garth’s been nagging me to take a look into. It’s all the way over in Kentucky, usually out of my territory, but Frank’s off on another one of his benders and the pay’s good, so I’ll probably head that way. Be gone a couple days probably. Maybe more, depends on the infestation. So you guys can…” he gestured at them aimlessly. “You know. Whatever.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sam said, rising to his feet and turning his attention toward the bedroom. The burst of shock that came from Dean was unmistakable, but his features didn’t even twitch.

“You want to come with me?”

“It’s why you bought me, isn’t it?”

Frustration. Sadness.

“You can do whatever you want, Sam. You don’t owe me.”

“I know,” Sam said with an easy nod, then turned and disappeared into the bedroom to pack. Dean turned back to his food, seemingly noticing for the first time that he’d spread mustard on both sides of his sandwich bread.

“Loose clothes!” he shouted suddenly. “You’ve gotta wear ‘em inside out!”

Sam didn’t respond, and the house fell into silence. Castiel drew his legs up under him, resting easily on the upholstery, his wings tucked neatly behind him.

He was keeping an eye on Dean.

Metaphorically.

Literally, he was looking out the window, past the car in the driveway, trying to make out the letters carved into the tree on the far side of the gravel drive.

In his mind, he was waiting for Dean to speak because he was going to, he had something very important he needed to say and he didn’t know the words for it. They bubbled through his head like a roiling stew and for the thousandth time, Castiel missed being with beings that could communicate like civilized people.

“He still wants you,” Castiel said finally, not looking back to Dean. The hunter sputtered, half-denying and seeking clarification. Castiel spared him a glance.

“You’re trying to decide how to ask me about Sam. I wanted his assistance with a custom that piqued my interest.”

“Kissing,” Dean replied, his voice flat. Castiel made a noncommittal noise.

“Physical contact in general. You seem to enjoy touching him a great deal; I want to know why.”

Dean’s mouth opened for a retort, but he closed it again before the words could escape. Castiel didn’t mind- he’d seen the shape of them in Dean’s mind.

“Yes, that,” he answered. “I want that. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Dean said, and his voice was tired. He sat down at the table, sandwich abandoned on the counter.

“Be careful with him,” the hunter said at last. Castiel raised an eyebrow.

“The two of you are so fragile it’s a constant battle not to crush you with an idle gesture,” he replied. “I’m always careful.”

“That’s not what I mean. Sam’s… he’s had it rough. He doesn’t always understand…” Dean trailed off, then focused on Castiel. “Forget it, look who I’m talking to. Just, make sure he knows what you’re getting into, okay?”

Castiel nodded.

“So I don’t hurt him like you do.”  
Dean visibly flinched.

“Jeez, man, I don’t-” he paused. “It’s not on purpose, okay? It’s not my fault I didn’t know what I was buying. I just needed help hunting, I didn’t mean to pick up a trained sex slave, it was a mistake.”

“Ready when you are,” Sam intoned from the doorway, and Dean glanced over.

“Sam, I didn’t mean-”

Sam nodded gently.

“I’m not what you expected. I figured that much out already. But you’ve been patient with me and I appreciate that.”

Castiel watched Dean as the hunter struggled for words. Dean was feeling it again, that same thing he felt when he and Sam touched, but now it was making him unhappy instead of giddy. Castiel frowned. Maybe the feeling was only beneficial if there was physical contact? Or maybe Dean was getting sick. Or maybe it wasn’t related to Sam at all. Who knew, with humans.

“Can I go put this in the car?” Sam asked when it became obvious that Dean didn’t have any kind of meaningful response. “Or do you need me.”

“Yeah, go, it’s fine, you don’t need to ask.” Dean waved him off and Sam nodded, hefting his bag onto his shoulder and heading out. Castiel watched him through the window as he opened the backseat of the car and threw the stitched bag into the backseat.

“You gonna be okay here on your own? We’ll be gone a few days.”

“I expect I can keep myself occupied,” Castiel answered. He had some plans of his own, but they were nothing he felt he needed to share with the hunter. He inclined his head toward the window. “He’s waiting for you.”

“I didn’t mean I was going _this second,_ ” Dean huffed. “At the very least I’m gonna finish my damn sandwich.”

Castiel sent a thought Sam’s way, sharp, directed, strong enough to push through his defenses. Outside, Sam turned back toward the house, his eyes searching the windows. He met Castiel’s eyes and Cas sent another thought, beckoning.

“Will it cause problems with you, if Sam and I continue?” Castiel asked, still looking out the window.

“It’s not my business. I don’t tell him what to do.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Castiel watched the war going on inside Dean’s head, two halves of the same emotion biting and snapping like a pair of dragons, drawing blood and finally resolving.

“No,” Dean answered at last. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

“Good.”

 

 

 

Sam looked back up at the house, searching for Castiel’s face amongst the reflected branches. The angel was calling him, through the bond. Not with words, there were no words, but Cas was calling him all the same.

Sam checked the bond, searching for holes in the armor, but as far as he could tell, there were none. Satisfied, he set off back into the house.

“I didn’t mean we were going, like literally right this minute,” Dean said when he stepped through the door. Sam nodded, toeing off his shoes. Castiel was sitting cross-legged on the couch, and since Dean was up and moving around, Sam took a seat next to him instead of on the floor.

“I’ve gotta tell Garth I’ll take the gig, and then I’ve gotta talk to the contact at the site itself. Probably won’t be leaving until morning. It’s about ten hours to Evansville, probably split it up into two days.”

Sam nodded. Two days was fine. Dean would probably let him drive part of the day, and they’d reach their destination early on the second day. He didn’t know much about spriggans, but he’d have ten hours to learn.

He liked listening to Dean talk, the way his voice changed when he got onto a topic he thought was really interesting. Back when Sam had been silent, Dean had picked up the slack, moving from topic to topic in between bursts of singing along with the radio.

“I’ll leave the bag in the car, and be ready when you are.”

He didn’t know what time Dean wanted to leave, but he knew he rarely woke up before seven. Sam would be up before that.

Dean looked at him, a long measured glance, like he wanted to say something else, but he shook his head and looked away before he found the words.

“So yeah. I’m going to call Garth. You guys… you do whatever.”

Dean retreated back into the bedroom without looking at either of them. Sam watched him go, wanting to follow and knowing that Dean didn’t want him to. Ultimately, that’s what he needed to focus on. Keep the bond closed, don’t be a nuisance, help where he could.

Sam turned back to Castiel. The angel was watching the doorway where Dean had just vanished, his head tilted slightly to the side.

“Did he say something to you?”

Castiel’s gaze turned back to Sam.

“He told me to be careful with you.”

Sam dropped his eyes.

“You don’t need to. If you don’t want to. I’ve had owners that were rough with me before, I can handle it. If that’s what you want.”

“It isn’t,” Castiel said simply, and Sam felt him brushing up against the edge of the barrier again. He held it steady, not letting the seraph feel the rush of relief. The angel could hurt him badly and he didn’t enjoy the thought of that, even if Castiel could heal him afterward.

But that wasn’t for Cas to know. Sam would take what he was given, it wasn’t his place to have opinions on other peoples’ tastes.

“What do you want?”

He wanted the answer at the same time he dreaded it, hoping it was something he could give and fearing deep down that it would be just another thing he couldn’t.

Castiel’s wings fluffed slightly, and he looked Sam up and down. Sam held still, letting him. Then the angel reached forward, the tips of his fingers resting against Sam’s forehead.

“Let the barrier down. I want to show you.”

Sam panicked, just for a second, but he got it under control.

“Are you sure? You want-”

“Yes.”

Sam exhaled deeply, then focused on the bond. He knew how to keep the barriers _up,_ that wasn’t complicated. He had to think about it nearly constantly, but it wasn’t complicated. Letting them down, though…

He didn’t want to just drop them. For one thing, he didn’t want Dean subjected to whatever broken thing lived in his mind. He’d have to relax them just a little bit, and that took concentration and a mental dexterity and experience he wasn’t sure he possessed yet.

He closed his eyes, mentally surveying the walls he’d put up in his mind. They weren’t strong, but they were solid. Slowly he focused on thinning them, letting them grow wispy and transparent, until holes began to form in the fabric of the barrier.

“Is that enough?”

And then Castiel was in his head, blue-white and white-hot, and Sam let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He’d missed the angel, from the scant days before he’d learned to build the barrier. Castiel’s blue and Dean’s green had been comforting in their simple _presence,_ like the warmth of bodies pressed against him while he slept. But he couldn’t have that, because of the way he was, and he accepted that.

It didn’t stop him from leaning into the contact, surrounding the hot light of Castiel’s presence inside him.

“This,” Castiel told him, and then there was a memory.

Sam was momentarily disoriented because it wasn’t his memory, or Castiel’s, for that matter. It was Dean’s, though Sam would be hard pressed to explain how he knew.

It was dark, Dean’s eyes were closed, but the focus of the memory wasn’t the things he could see. It was the things he could _feel_. Distantly, Sam could feel a physical sensation, the pressure of his own body on Dean’s skin, but that wasn’t the focus of the memory, either.

The focus was how Dean _felt,_ and for that, there were no words. It wasn’t just that his body was at ease, focused on the feel of Sam’s skin on his, it was the way his heart, his _mind_ were totally centered as well, as though Dean had nothing in the world more important to do than focus on the ex-slave currently making love to him.

Heat built in Dean’s belly and Sam _moved_ and Dean came, hard and fast, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

The memory snapped back and Sam blinked, back in the real world with Castiel’s unwavering gaze focused on him from across the couch.

“That,” the angel said flatly. “Can you do that again?”

“Of course. Anything you want.”

“Good. Do it.”

“I need a minute,” Sam said. Then, when Castiel frowned at him, “human things.”

The angel rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest.

Sam rose off the couch and padded down the hall to the bathroom. The bedroom door was open a crack, and he could hear Dean talking to someone, probably about the trip tomorrow. Sam smiled, looking forward to the time on the road. He liked learning about the supernatural, and Dean’s enthusiasm made it easy to ask questions.

He brushed his teeth and used the toilet, trying to remember if he knew anything about spriggans. They couldn’t see you if you wore your clothes inside out, which made them easy to kill individually. But they tended to infest places, like termites, so killing them individually wasn’t usually the trick.

He pushed his hair back out of his face, giving himself a cursory once-over in the mirror. He’d showered that morning, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Ever since he and Dean had started having regular sex, he’d done his best to make sure he was presentable on a moment’s notice, and it was paying off here.

He pulled his shirt over his head and checked over his body.

Dean hadn’t said anything else about wanting him to cut his hair, or raised any concerns about the dark hair that now grew on his chest and belly. Sam frowned, hoping Castiel didn’t have differing preferences but knowing it was too late to do anything about it now.

He pulled his shirt back over his head and raided the drawer under the sink where they kept the condoms and lubricant. (There were a number of small tubes, mostly because they kept losing them but partly because on an ill-fated whim Dean had bought a variety pack. Among the deceptively labeled flavor options was an innocuous tube simply marked ‘warming,’ which had culminated in cold showers for both of them and a resolution to never speak of it again. The tube remained in the back of the drawer, a cinnamon-orange warning against the hubris of man.)

Sam wasn’t sure which type they’d been using in Dean’s memory, so he selected a plain version and hoped for the best.

When he passed Dean’s door a second time, the phone conversation was still going on. He paused a moment in the hall, considering knocking, but in the end he decided not to. Dean rarely needed anything from him, and got frustrated if Sam offered too frequently. He’d usually concede to sex every second or third day, and they’d done that yesterday, so the likelihood that Dean would want him during the night was minimal. In any case, it sounded like he was deep into a conversation on his phone and Sam didn’t want to interrupt.

Castiel was on the couch, where Sam had left him. His legs were pulled up onto the seat, feet tucked under his knees, and his wings had fallen back into a position that Sam recognized as relaxed. They tended to pull high and back when Sam got too close, and when the angel’s eyes settled on him, that’s exactly what they did.

“We should go in the guest room,” Sam told him. “There’s not enough room on the couch to do this comfortably.”

The angel glanced at the door, then rose silently to his feet.

Castiel’s meager belongings were set up in the room, two pairs of jeans folded next to his as-of-yet-unworn shirts. Beside them on the dresser was a small collection of odds and ends- some stones, a book, a lug nut, a plastic bottle half full of river water, the o-ring off the top of a milk jug. Sam took in the spread, then turned back to Castiel, his face questioning.

“They interest me,” the angel said, a defensive edge to his voice. Sam smiled at that; for someone who claimed total disinterest in the human race, Castiel had a good deal of curiosity regarding its customs and creations.

Castiel relaxed and Sam leaned back toward him, tipping the angel’s jaw up and kissing him again.

“I like that about you,” he murmured, lips ghosting over Castiel’s skin. “The things you find amusing.”

“Hmm,” Castiel answered. He stepped back, keeping his back to the closed door. “Take your clothes off.”

Sam complied, doing it the way Abaddon had showed him, crossing his arms and pulling at the fabric just under his ribs. His body undulated as he pulled it over his head, his arms crossed, skin uncovered inch by inch. He dropped the shirt to the floor and undid the buckle of his jeans. They were snug on him, tighter than Dean liked to wear his, but Sam liked the way they accentuated the lines of his body. It also meant they didn’t just fall- they had to be guided down, his fingertips sliding easily over his thighs.

Castiel watched all this, unmoving, his wings pulled up and back.

“You’ll have to lie down,” Sam said after a moment, but Castiel shook his head.

“Not yet. Get on your knees.”

Sam dropped fluidly, folding into the pose for waiting- sitting back on his heels, hands on his thighs. This time, however, he didn’t drop his eyes- he knew he was supposed to, but with Cas it was different. Cas didn’t own him- didn’t want to. This was something he could do, just to be helpful for a friend, and for that, he didn’t need to drop his gaze.

Castiel looked him over, wings flaring gently, the feathers over his shoulder fluffing out. The black feathers had an oil-slick shine to them, and not for the first time, Sam caught himself staring.

“There’s no magic in them,” Castiel repeated.

“There doesn’t need to be. They’re beautiful.”

Castiel smirked, like he thought that was funny.

“Can I touch them?” Sam asked suddenly, and Castiel pulled back, his eyes widening slightly. Then he frowned.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he said quietly, and Sam obeyed, leaning back and crossing his wrists behind the small of his back.

Slowly, cautiously, Castiel’s left wing unfolded, feathers splaying like a paper fan. There was a pattern, spots or mottled sections of light and dark. Sam couldn’t have said for sure, because he was looking at the colors, and in those feathers he saw _all_ of them.

Castiel hesitated again, then let the limb rest against Sam’s shoulder. The feathers were soft but surprisingly stiff. Sam leaned gently against it, letting the feathers slide over his skin. He kept his hands where they were, letting Cas get used to him.

“You should have seen them before,” Castiel said quietly. “Back home, they don’t look like this. They’re fearsome and brilliant.”

“They’re brilliant here,” Sam murmured, but Castiel didn’t hear him.

“They were never meant to be part of a vessel. _I_ wasn’t. I built this shape to contain myself and now that I have it I don’t know what to do with it.” He held out his hands, looking down at them like he’d forgotten they were there. “It does things without consulting me. It wants things. It’s easily damaged, it fails to respond to commands…” he looked up at Sam. “I don’t know how you stand it.”

“It’s all we know,” Sam answered, shrugging against the pressure of Castiel’s wing.

“You like yours. You’re proud of it.”

“I’m proud of what I can do with it.”

“And what it can withstand.”

Sam frowned.

“I guess so. If you want to call it that. I like being able to give people what they want.”

“Even if they want to hurt you.”

“Especially then.”

Castiel was silent, considering the man in front of him.

“Do you want me to hurt you?”

Sam shook his head. Castiel’s expression didn’t change.

“But you’d let me. If I wanted to.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“I appreciate that,” Sam said, a light smile on his lips. He shifted his weight slightly, letting his knees slide further apart. Castiel didn’t react, just stood, watching, considering. Then, abruptly, he drew his wing back behind him.

“Get on the bed.”

“In the memory-”

“We’re improvising,” Castiel interrupted. He retrieved Sam’s belt from his puddled jeans, then turned to where Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Cross your wrists,” he ordered, and Sam obeyed, holding them out to the angel. Castiel wrapped the belt deftly around his hands before buckling it. “Test it.”

Sam did, twisting and pulling against the leather, but not managing to loosen it. Castiel nodded.

“Lie back.”

Sam did, stretching out onto the mattress, his bound hands above his head. Castiel watched him and when he’d stopped moving, Cas stepped forward. He reached out, laying the palm of one hand against Sam’s bare abdomen. His skin was warm and Sam shivered, goosebumps rising along his body. Sam was distantly aware of his cock hardening, but he ignored it, focusing on the way Castiel’s eyes raked over him.

“Is it yours?” Castiel asked abruptly. “The vessel. Is it you?”

Sam didn’t know who else’s it would be.

“It’s mine.”

“But you let people damage it. The scars I healed… they would have marked you forever.”

Sam looked away, letting his vision blur as he stared at the ceiling.

“Some people want to mark someone forever. It’s something I can do.” He could feel Castiel’s eyes on him, and for the first time in a long time, he was ashamed. “I don’t have anything else to offer.”

Castiel’s hand vanished from his belly and Sam waited, letting his body relax, watching the ceiling. He heard the rustle of Castiel’s jeans hitting the floor, felt the mattress shift as the angel climbed on. And then his view was obstructed by blue eyes and dark, messy hair.

“I’m glad I removed them,” the angel told him, and Sam glanced guiltily at the white line crossing Castiel’s chest, the silver bangle around his throat.

“I’m sorry-” he started, but Castiel silenced him, leaning down and pressing his lips to the corner of Sam’s mouth. The angel was straddling his hips and Sam arched upward, experimentally, and was surprised at how _light_ he was.

“I like you more, like this,” Castiel said, straightening up and running his hands over Sam’s chest. “The people who marked you, I don’t think they had the right. Not to you.”

Sam opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He wanted to tell Cas that he was wrong, that of _course_ they had a right, but he couldn’t find the words. Not with the conviction they’d held before. Castiel touched him reverently, almost a caress. His hands delved between them, fingers closing around Sam’s erection and he groaned, rolling his hips upward into the touch.

“Is this what you want?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Sam moaned. He knew the answer to that, the answer Castiel was looking for. One of the angel’s knees pressed between his thighs and he spread them, making room. He could feel Cas’s hard on pressing against the crease of his hip and he arched up against it. “Please, Cas.”

Castiel kissed him and the world went dark, and Sam realized the angel’s wings were surrounding them, blocking out the world. Castiel’s hands cupped his face, and he felt the seraph pressing against the edge of the bond.

“Let me in, Sam,” he murmured, his lips ghosting over Sam’s mouth. Sam closed his eyes, turning away.

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. Or I can make you.”

He could feel Castiel there, insistent, pressing against his barriers, and he could feel them failing.

“Cas-” his voice cracked and Cas shushed him, kissing deeply into his mouth and cutting the words off.

“Don’t hide this from me. Not now.”

“You’ll hate me.”

“Never.”

Sam let out a sob, and the barrier fell. Castiel surged through his mind, filling it with a white heat, burning away the last of the wall. Sam’s eyes flew open and he saw the sky, reflected in Castiel’s wings, stars upon stars glowing and growing and dying, a million years in a moment, and it was too much, too bright, too dark, too hot, and he was _burning-_

Castiel’s hands were cool on his skin, thumbs wiping the tears from his cheeks, and the angel spoke to him- not with words, there were no words- and he remembered Castiel’s words- _we contain each other._

“Everything I am, living inside you,” he murmured, or maybe that was Castiel, speaking all those weeks ago and only now being heard. It didn’t matter, not with the angel flooding through his mind in an azure wave, filling in all the cracks he’d never known were there.

He felt his hands, clenched hard around the slats of the headboard and he felt his hands, tracing the edge of Castiel’s jaw, the stubble on his skin, his body straining up off the bed. He felt Castiel’s hands on his hips, bracing him down, and he heard the angel groan as he buried himself deep inside Sam’s body. He felt himself filled, felt Castiel’s arms, strong as iron, lifting him up and pulling him close.

“Cas-” he said again and this time the angel didn’t answer, his face buried in the hollow of Sam’s shoulder, and Sam held him, rocking into him slowly, filling him in slow easy thrusts.

He opened his eyes and looked up, out at the stars, bursting like fireworks, burning hot and fast, sparks raining down over the two of them.

“I can see,” Castiel murmured suddenly, “why someone would want to mark you.” He thrust down into Sam, filling him totally and still pressing. “Why someone would want to claim you.”

His teeth closed on Sam’s throat, leaving a bruise Sam knew would be there in the morning. Sam stared upwards, into the stars he knew were close enough to touch, the distance making him dizzy, making the room spin, because it was so _far._

He gasped, drawing in a breath he hadn’t been holding, sucking in air because his lungs were on fire, his body was on fire, and Castiel’s hands were like ice, roaming over his skin, dousing the flames.

He saw himself through Castiel’s eyes, felt the tension pooling in Castiel’s belly, felt the tight heat of his own body, his legs wrapped around Castiel’s hips, and then he arched back and felt his wings flaring wide and that was it.

He couldn’t keep the shout in, couldn’t grit his teeth against the orgasm tearing itself out of him. He saw the cerulean light burning in Castiel’s eyes as the angel buried himself deep, and the stars went black.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoooo!  
> Long chapter is _long._
> 
> Okay so this one is almost twenty pages, which is how I excuse going the whole long weekend with no chapter update. I know you were all waiting anxiously. Don't worry baby birds, I'll feed you. 
> 
> So I like this chapter, but I feel like it's one of those chapters that's either going to be very deep and meaningful, or it's going to be a purple-prosed waste of time. Ya'll seemed to like it when Sam took a chapter to map out Dean's body in an almost totally non-sexual way so I'm guessing you'll like this too? God, I hope so. 
> 
> So in the meantime, I got a little distracted with a spat of tumblr fame by launching what I'm calling the[Beer Theory of Destiel](http://mailissa-blog.tumblr.com/post/144978795551/dean-winchester-and-the-confession-at-the-end-of) and after I posted it, I started getting a lot of anonymous hate mail which made me really giddy for two reasons: 
> 
> Number one, because nobody sends you anonymous hate mail when you yourself are anonymous. They can't hate you if they don't know you and I'm just enough of a whore that I still think any attention is good attention. 
> 
> Number two, because it introduced me to a whole new group of fans which I hitherto did not know anything about. These guys are I guess called 'bibros' (edit: I've been informed that this is a co-opted term and most bibros are cool) and I've been insulated from them up until now, but as far as I can tell, their favorite part of Supernatural is hating the fact that Castiel is part of it. I didn't know anything about this group but now that I do, I'm really happy because I lost a bunch of readers after the decision to add Cas, and it was a decision that I didn't take lightly. I felt really bad because I worried that the story was starting to suck, but no: turns out a certain percentage of the fandom will just bail when Cas shows up. So it WASN'T ME! 
> 
> I'd also like to do a shoutout to the lovely GertieCraign who is pointing out my typos- and by the way, folks: nitpick me. Really. Continuity errors, worldbuilding, typos, kinkshaming- whatever. If you think it, say it. 
> 
> Anyway one of the things that she saw was iPad which she corrected to ipad, which is how most people write it, and it got me off on a huge tangent so here we go: writing about writing.  
> So, I deal with Apple every day so I wrote 'iPad' because that's the trademarked term and that's how Apple spells it. But the colloquial is ipad, to the point where it's in danger of becoming a genericised trademark, as evidenced by the time that Microsoft paid $400 million to establish the surface tablet as the [official ipad of the NFL.](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-rosenthal-patriots-microsoft-surface-loss-0126-biz-20160125-column.html) (I fucking died.) (Those of you paying attention during Supernatural 10.17 may also have noted that the Surface is the official tablet of _fucking Hell_ which I can verify based on my admittedly minimal interactions with them.) On that line, Adobe sent out some emails last year reminding it's business partners not to use the phrase 'photoshopping' and instead say 'photo manipulation using Adobe Photoshop (tm) graphics editing tools' or something along those lines.  
>  Spoiler alert: we're not doing that, 'photoshopping' is headed inexorably toward the domain of genericized trademarks.  
> Anyway, where I'm GOING with all this is that when I'm writing I actually pay a fair deal of attention to brand names and product descriptions- you don't really pay attention to how many you reference in daily life until you have to start describing things for a global audience. (I know I've got some folks in Germany- anywhere else? Weigh in. I'm making a map. I want my smut in every country in the world.)  
> So, yeah, it's interesting that people are picking up on the word choices I use and that ya'll have opinions on whether I did it right or not... I guess that [Jared and I had the same crazy moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDL0hOrzjQQ) where it's like... holy shit. People are actually paying attention. That's amazing. That's great.


	37. Chapter 37

Sam came back to himself slowly, drifting back into his own body in a process not unlike waking up from a very vivid dream.

Castiel was still above him, but he’d pulled his wings back, tucking them behind his back. He was staring down at Sam with what might have been confusion or possibly awe. On his face, it was hard to tell, sometimes.

With a start, Sam realized the bond was still open and he scrabbled at it, trying to rebuild his barriers.

“Don’t. Please.”

He paused, looking up at the angel in the half-light.

“Why?”

“Because I want to feel you. Just a little longer.”

Sam canted his hips, emphasizing the way their bodies were still linked.

“There’s better ways I can make you feel.” His voice was smooth, like melting chocolate, betraying none of the panic he felt at still having the link open.

Castiel’s eyes narrowed, and Sam realized he’d said the wrong thing. The angel pulled back, leaving Sam’s skin cold in the evening air.

“You tell very peculiar lies,” Castiel mused. “They aren’t self-serving.”

“Why should they be.”

It wasn’t a question. Castiel studied his face and Sam looked away. He could feel the seraph through the link, approaching him with what Sam could only describe as a _caress._

“So did that help?” he asked, changing the subject. “Did you get what you needed?”

Castiel sighed, collapsing down onto the mattress beside Sam.

“Turn that way.”

Sam obeyed, turning onto his side, his bound hands coming level with his waist. Castiel’s fingers flicked over his ribcage, and for the first time he noticed the thin fluid streaking his belly. Castiel’s fingertips were like ice, and a chill danced over him, and then it- and the mess- was gone.

“Neat trick.”

“Hmm.”

Castiel didn’t come closer, but he didn’t take his hand away, either. They lay there in silence for a while, and Sam felt himself beginning to drift off. It occurred to him that Castiel didn’t sleep, and he’d probably be leaving soon, and he wondered whether he should try to check in on Dean before falling asleep.

“He’s already asleep,” Castiel told him, and Sam had a brief moment of confusion before remembering- the bond.

“So are you just casually reading my mind right now?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“For whatever you see in there. I know you don’t like it. That you’d prefer Dean.”

“You perplex me to a degree that borders on frustration. Dean’s motivations are simpler. It does not mean I prefer him.”

Sam shifted, trying to keep his arm from going to sleep. Castiel’s hand shifted, moving to settle over his belly.

“And you cannot become with child,” Castiel mused, and Sam had to chuckle.

“No. No I can not.”

“You do it because of the joy it brings you. And your partner.”

“Right. Understand now?”

Castiel sighed. His arm suddenly seemed very heavy where it draped across Sam’s waist. His fingers pressed divots into the skin of his abdomen.

“No.”

Sam’s stomach tightened.

“You didn’t like it?”

Castiel shifted, and Sam felt the cool brush of feathers across his shoulder.

“On the contrary. You were quite enjoyable. But you and I are linked- when I reached for you I could feel you there. I was able to know that you enjoyed yourself as well.”

Sam hummed, shifting against the blanket. He didn’t like the idea that Castiel would forgo his own enjoyment for Sam’s comfort. It seemed antithetical to the purpose of the exercise.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Castiel intoned. “I don’t understand how humans can interact this intimately without _knowing_. I don’t understand how your owners could take pleasure from you, knowing that you would suspend your own desires to please them. I don’t understand how the men who bound me could-”

He stopped suddenly, and Sam waited for him to finish. He didn’t, and Sam felt the light touch vanish from his body. Castiel sat up, his movements shifting the mattress.

“You may put the barrier back up now, if you wish. I think I’ve seen all I need to.”

Sam closed his eyes, mentally reconstructing the wall between himself and the outside world. Castiel stood, and Sam watched him shuffle back into his jeans.

“We need to get you some of your own,” he observed. “Mine are too long for you.”

“I like them,” the angel replied evenly. “I’d alter the vessel, if I didn’t.”

Sam blinked, absorbing that information.

“You can do that?”

“Of course. I built it, I can change it if I wish. Though the basic shape remains immutable.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like me to unbind you?”

“If you’re okay with it.”

Castiel’s gaze was cool, but he didn’t comment, just crossed the room and slipped the buckle on Sam’s outstretched wrists. Sam nodded a thank you, rubbing the red marks out of his skin.

“I think maybe next time I will not need to,” Castiel mused, and Sam tried not to react visibly to the idea of _next time._ Cas hadn’t been lying about enjoying himself. He pushed down the swell of happiness that brought him.

“That’s good. I’m not nearly as vicious as I look,” he said instead, flashing the angel a wide smile.

“I’m going out. You may stay here if you wish. Dean is asleep, but I doubt he would be opposed to your company, in any case.”

Castiel rolled his shoulders, both sets, feathers flicking out and then returning to their prone state. Sam was struck with the desire to reach out and run his fingers down the shaft of one primary feather, but he stayed his hand. He and Cas were making progress. It wouldn’t do any good to get grabby now.

The angel paused with his hand on the doorknob, and Sam felt him flicker against the bond, just for a moment.

“He reaches for you. Your defenses aren’t strong, but they’re enough to keep him out. He reaches anyway.”

Sam shook his head.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing. We connected once already; he didn’t like what he saw.”

“I think he knows better than you think,” Castiel answered, and then he was gone.

Sam watched the door for a while, then stood and gathered his clothes in the dark. The covers had been rumpled during their activities, and he straightened them thoughtlessly, trying to set the room back to the way it had been before he’d come.

Castiel didn’t sleep in here, obviously, but he did occasionally lock himself in for what Sam assumed was some good old-fashioned pouting. Sam didn’t know what the angel did during that time, but whatever it was, there weren’t any clues to be found here now. Pondered his bottlecaps, maybe. Who knew.

The house was dark and quiet, but Sam knew the layout and was used to making his way in the dark. He carried his clothing in a bundle, not bothering to dress for the simple walk across the house.

Castiel had been right; Dean was asleep. Sam was careful not to wake him when he slid quietly between the sheets. Dean shifted slightly, making a small sound, but didn’t wake.

_He reaches for you._

Sam frowned. Castiel was wrong. He didn’t understand humans- he was mistaking lust for… for something else.

It wasn’t worth considering.

 

Dean roused half-awake when he felt the mattress dip, and for a moment he smiled, reaching out for the other man.

And then he remembered and his hand froze in midair.

Sam and Cas.

Sam can’t sleep alone. And Castiel doesn’t sleep.

His hand dropped to the pillow, pulling it closer. Sam stilled, trying not to disturb him further, and Dean thought about mumbling a hello, a welcome, but he found he didn’t really want to talk about it.

It would be an understatement to say he was conflicted about the situation, because he was bordering-on-uncomfortably happy to have Sam back in his bed. And what kind of masochist is happy when his freshly fucked not-boyfriend still sleeps in his bed to demonstrate how thoroughly lodged in the friend zone he now is?

And… yeah. That was gonna be a problem. And it’s not like he had anyone to blame but himself. He knew Sam had an odd and varied set of motivations defining the relationship between the two of them, and he’d be lying if he said he understood what they were. But he’d been the one to decide that that was fine and carry on without the “ _but what are we??_ ” that might have saved this whole fucked up situation. Saved it for him anyway; Sam and Cas seemed to be doing just fine and hey, good for them. He should put it aside and not think about it too hard.

That’s what he _should_ do, but it was approaching the polar opposite of what he _did_ do.

He’d gotten off the phone with Garth and fallen back onto the bed, ready for a nice long bout of staring at the ceiling and cursing his own cowardice.

Instead, he’d gotten a sudden mental picture of Castiel on the couch, his wings spread out wide, his head thrown back as Sam licked his way up the length of his cock.

And that? That was not helping the situation and Dean pushed it away. Because fantasizing about people you know in real life is _bad_ and anyway, they weren’t in the living room. They were in the spare bedroom.

Sam was probably on his belly, his face buried in his arms, his hips high and his thighs spread in invitation, and Cas was probably behind him, strong hands gripping the curve of his ass as he fucked in-

Okay, no, that was _not_ helping.

But it was giving him what could best be described as an _insistent_ erection.

Because Cas was grumpy and weird but he was also damn good looking, all lean muscle and dark features and now that the floodgates had opened he couldn’t stop imagining this.

It had been simultaneously one of the hottest and most begrudging jerkoff sessions he’d ever had, but once it started it couldn’t be stopped. It’s not like threesomes had ever been a favorite fantasy, but at the same time, he knew how they worked. He had the internet. And now he couldn’t shake the idea of kneeling next to Sam, jerking him off lazily as the two of them took turns sucking Cas’s dick. Or the two of them taking Sam at the same time, one on each side, leaning forward to lock mouths as they filled him-

He was getting hard again and that was _also_ bad because Sam was actually here next to him now. It’s one thing to fantasize about a guy, it’s another thing to fantasize about him while he’s lying literally _right there._

He needed to go back to sleep. He had a long drive tomorrow.

Dean closed his eyes, thinking about head colds and math tests and the slimy piles that skin walkers leave behind when they shift. It helped a little, and before long, he fell back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised Dean to people after the last chapter, and I was maybe not wholly truthful with that.   
> Cas had more stuff to say. Sorry. 
> 
> Next chapter: road trip! Dean's POV, I promise. Probably.


	38. Chapter 38

Dean woke up to an empty bed and cold sheets.

He took a second to feel sorry for himself at the poetic symbolism, but he couldn’t keep it up because Sam _always_ woke up earlier than he did.

He shuffled out to the living room, following the smell of coffee, because making coffee was another one of the things that Sam always did in the morning. Sam was on the couch, his own steaming mug forgotten beside him. Dean blinked at him, tried to think of something to say, failed, and turned his attention to the coffee machine.

“Hey,” he croaked when he’d downed half a mug and felt up to making conversation. “Where’s Cas?”

Sam looked up from the laptop and shrugged.

“Haven’t seen him since last night. I don’t think he’s the type for sentimental sendoffs, so he might not be back before we leave.”

He went back to whatever he was looking at on the screen.

“Anything from Naomi? Check the email.”

“Already did. Nothing.”

Dean cursed.

“So then, what _are_ you reading?”

“Spriggans. I know we’ve got a long drive but I thought it’d be helpful if I knew _something_ before we left.”

Dean nodded, then downed the second half of the mug fast, before it had the chance to burn him.

“I’m gonna grab a shower. I’ll be ready to go in forty five minutes or so.”

Sam glanced up at him.

“Want company?”

He was smiling that smile, the one with the mischief, the one that made Dean disregard his better judgment.

He hesitated.

“I’m fine.”

 

He kicked himself all through the shower and then all through getting dressed and packing his duffel and checking his gun and looking for his phone. In between kicking himself he congratulated himself on his willpower and resolved to talk to Sam about this at some point between now and the hotel. He wasn’t sure he was capable of turning Sam down for long.

 

Sam did not want to talk about sex. Or Cas, for that matter. Sam wanted to talk about Cornish faeries and the methods of killing them and whether Dean thought there might be changelings to contend with during this case.

Dean drove and listened to classic rock and explained about fae infestations and tried to remember if spriggans reacted more strongly to silver or iron. He could google it, but he’d read somewhere that it was good for your brain if you tried to create interconnecting pathways and so he tried to remember if there was anything else in the same genus that he knew about for certain.

There wasn’t, or if there was, it was getting shuffled to the back because right now, every damn pathway in his brain was pointed unerringly toward the fact that _Cas and Sam were fucking_. He couldn’t remember another time in his life that he’d been so unhappy about something which otherwise made an exceptional sexual fantasy.

He made a conscious effort to keep his eyes on the road, because it was a good practice, but also because every time he glanced at Sam his eyes were drawn to the dark bruises marring the side of his throat. It made him think of how Sam tasted, and the sounds he made when Dean sucked similar marks into his skin. And _then_ he’d think about whether Sam had made those noises when Castiel had marked him, and there was a terrible combination of jealousy and fierce arousal and quite frankly it was giving him a stomachache and an extremely confused boner.

Sam, for whatever reason, didn’t seem particularly interested in discussing it. Every time Dean mentioned the angel, Sam would steer the conversation somewhere else, like the hunt or the music or whether there was any bottled water left in the back.

Dean sighed, and changed his approach.

“What do you want to do, Sam?”

“I’d like to drive some today, if you don’t mind.”

“No, I mean, in general. You’re free, you don’t have to stick around helping me if you don’t want to.”

Sam bit his lip.

“I’d like to be a hunter. I’ve looked into it, online. Into getting licensed. There’s a lot to it.”

Dean laughed.

“Well, yeah. It’s a license to kill, they wanna make sure you know the difference between a creature and a plain old weirdo. It’s one of the reasons there are so few of us.” He frowned. “That’s what you want to do? Really?”

“You expected something else?”

Dean shrugged.

“I dunno, you seem like a people sort of person, you know? And you’re used to dealing with people who’ve got money, you can walk the talk up there. Seems like you’d get sick of road trips creature guts and solitude.”

“It’s not solitude if I’m with you,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah but I’m dumb jackass with a gun. Don’t you miss, I dunno, all that classy shit from before?”

Sam stared out the window.

“No. I don’t.”

Dean paused.

“Not even if you could see it from the other side? I mean, you’ve got the money and you’re smart, you could really be somebody-”

“I _am_ somebody,” Sam snapped. “I’m trying my best, but if you don’t think I can be any good to you, you can just _say_ so instead of telling me I need to fuck off to fulfill my _potential_.”

“Oh for christ’s sake, not this again. I think you’d be a great hunter, probably better than me, I just want to make sure you’re doing it because you _want_ to.” He paused. “It’s like the sex, okay? Which has been great. Phenomenal. Really. _Really._ But obviously you and Cas have been getting really close and it’s kinda fucking with me to know you’ve been sleeping with me out of obligation when you wanted somebody else.”

Aaaaand there it was. Dean kept his eyes on the road, completely ignoring the peripheral vision of Sam turning to face him.

“What?”

“Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great, he’s hot and you guys obviously get along great and I think that’s awesome, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. You’ve been into him for a while, right?”

“I guess so? But-”

“Okay but that whole time we’ve been sleeping together and I _knew_ that was a bad idea because you’re doing it as an apology or a fucking… a punishment for yourself or I don’t even know what, and that’s not ideal but I’m only fucking human and I wanted it, Sam, I wanted _you. Bad._ But if you’ve wanted to be with Cas this whole time-”

“I wanted you,” Sam interrupted.

“- you have to do what _you_ want, not what you think you owe me-” Dean stopped, rewound. Replayed. Rewound. Replayed. “What do you mean, ‘you want me’?”

Sam frowned.

“You’re usually only interested every other day. Yesterday was an off-day. I didn’t see any indication that you were breaking the pattern.”

Pause. Rewind. Replay.

Still not making sense.

“So what, if it had been my day you would have turned him down?”

“Or told him to wait, yes.”

“Sam… you’re not a slave any more, you don’t need to fuck somebody just because they _ask_ you to!”

Sam frowned.

“I know that. I like Cas. I was happy to go to bed with him.” Sam glanced over. “Because I was available.”

Dean sighed. Obviously, something was getting lost in translation here. At least at first, he’d been able to blame Sam’s silence for the lack of communication. Now? Now he just plain old wasn’t getting it. Sam was frowning at him.

“It bothers you, that Cas and I were together.”

“Yeah, you know what? It does.”

And so much for what he’d told Cas yesterday. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this- would just let Sam make his choice and accept it, whatever it was. Dean had _sworn_ to himself he’d back out gracefully and let it happen.

So much for that.

He’d been trying to _apologize,_ dammit, how did this conversation get here?

Sam was talking again.

“Why didn’t you say something yesterday? Dean, I would have stopped if you had told me you weren’t happy with it!”

“Because that’s just it, I want you to do what _you_ want! That’s what I’ve been telling you this whole time! I don’t want you making all your choices based on what you think _I_ want. If you want to be with Cas, then you should be with Cas.”

“I wanted to go to bed with Cas, and I did. So why are you still upset?”

Dean opened his mouth, speaking almost before he’d figured out what he was going to say.

“Because I hoped you wanted to be with me.”

Sam stared.

“I _do,_ ” he said slowly. “All the time. I was under the impression that you were finished with me for the night.”

Dean laughed, incredulous.

“So there’s something real between us, and you’re only fucking Cas in your free time.”

Sam nodded.

“Exactly.”

Dean blinked.

Opened his mouth. Closed it again.

Listened carefully to the white noise in his brain. Instant replay was officially offline.

“Sam,” he started cautiously. “I’m not big on the ‘but what are we’ talk. I’m really not. But I feel like there are extenuating circumstances here. And I’d like to clarify this.”

This was _exactly_ what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He’d seen inside Sam’s head- knew the loyalty that lay there. He was being selfish.

“We didn’t meet under great circumstances and this whole thing has been the weirdest experience of my life. But listen, because I mean this. If we’d met differently- if I’d met you in a bar instead of a slave barracks and you owed me _nothing,_ I’d still want you to stay. And you’re great in bed and you’ll never hear me say otherwise, but even if you weren’t, even if you weren’t even into guys, I’d still be happy to have you as a partner.”

He took a breath. And here was the hard part, the part he _knew_ he was going to do wrong. All these months of telling Sam he needed to choose his own life, he was going to ask him to choose differently.

“If you want to be with Cas- and you really want to, for _you,_ then I’m happy for you, I’ll help you move your stuff back into the spare room and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. I can always use the backup. But if I’m being completely honest, I’m really hoping you’ll stay with me.”

“Oh,” Sam said quietly. Dean glanced over and Sam’s brow was furrowed, like he was concentrating on something way more important than this. Then, “ _oh!_ ”

“What?”

Sam looked over at him, his hazel eyes wide.   
“I didn’t realize I needed to choose.” He frowned. “Dean, I’ve never in my life had an owner who wouldn’t lend me out when he was otherwise occupied. And you’re otherwise occupied a lot. You don’t want me waiting on you, it makes you uncomfortable- don’t deny it, I can tell- so why wouldn’t I go to Cas when you send me away?”

Gears were shifting inside Dean’s head, big gears, important gears, while he tried to formulate an answer to that question.

Why wouldn’t Sam go to Cas?

Well, because Dean expected him to act like a free man, that’s why. Dean expected him to choose a partner and be monogamous in exactly the way he’d _never in his life_ been able to do.

Dean stared at the dashed tallow highway markers and realized, through his relief, that he was a god damn idiot. And just like that, he started laughing. He started laughing and he couldn’t stop.

The impala kicked up clouds of dust as he pulled her onto the shoulder and threw her into park. Sam was looking at him with an utterly baffled facial expression and that just made him laugh harder because what was he even _doing_ with this weird, frustrating ex-slave, other than being completely and totally happy that he was going to stay?

“What are you-?” Sam started, and that’s as far as he got before Dean pulled him in for a kiss, deep and sweet and filled with all the relief he couldn’t put into words.

“Come on,” he said when he finally pulled back. Sam’s face was flushed, and he was grinning even through his confusion. “It’s twenty miles to the third best burgers in the country.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG Misha's on tumblr and Dean talked about his feelings, surely the end times are upon us. 
> 
> This conversation is... not ideal. I think. I'd like to invite some actual real criticism here, on how to make this chapter better, because I know it can be.   
> In any case, I feel like the information exchange that needed to happen, happened. 
> 
> I'd like to thank arihavoc and aliceinthewonderland for letting me know about [Somebody to Lean On](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6495709) by Trashpanda, which is I guess a retelling of this story in the Owari no Seraph universe? I've been reading it and it's pretty good, I gotta say. And I appreciate ya'll looking out for me.   
> I truly and honestly welcome any derivative work- adapt it for different fandoms, translate it, turn it into a comic, turn it into a movie, hell, draw some fanart. I shall flail excitedly in your direction when I see it. 
> 
> Made me realize, though, that I've probably got some people I should toss credit at, too. 
> 
> First off, everything wing!kinky can be directly attributed to NorthernSparrow and her fics, 'Flight' and 'Room of One's Own.' NorthernSparrow did a better darkness than the show, to be honest. 
> 
> My characterization of Castiel and, to a lesser extent, the idea of elementals came from "A beginner's guide to communing with the dead" by suspiciousflashlight. 
> 
> Aspects of non!human Castiel also come from Annie D's 'What Has Eight Tentacles and Isn't Allowed to Eat Pie?'
> 
> I aspire to someday be as poetic as Lochinvar and as gritty as ameliacareful. 
> 
> Jay Tryfanstone's 'tomorrow when the apricots are ripe' inspired me to be bold and dedicate myself to the story, to tell it the way it needs to be told, and not worry if other people think it's weird. 
> 
> The slave market at the beginning of the story was inspired by the Cat Star Chronicles by Cheryl Brooks. 
> 
> 'I Can't Be Fixed and I Don't Care To Be Saved' by Swiggity_swydra_fuck_hydra gave me a good reference of what a slave!POV should look like, as did Keeping You in Sight by gingerswag. 
> 
> There was another one, which I've lost now, in which Castiel is a spirit medium and I think (?) Jimmy is his spirit, who he summons with a pop tart at some point, even though the spirit prefers special biscuits. Yeah I stole that, I'd credit it if I could find the damn story. 
> 
> There's also Stephen King's 'On Writing' which taught me to never tell when you can show, and 'The House of Red' by Mary Anne Gruen which taught me that fanfiction can be just as real and deep as any work of original fiction. 
> 
> And last but not least, my first boss, Nancy, who was making chainmail Highlander cosplay well into her forties, who taught me that I didn't have to grow out of anything I didn't want to.


	39. Chapter 39

There was probably some poetic symmetry in the fact that, after six months of trying to get through to Sam, in the end it was the idea of some really depraved sex that finally bridged the gap.

And okay, that wasn’t entirely a fair analysis of the situation, because the thought of daisy-chaining Sam and Cas had earned itself a special place in Dean’s heart, but that isn’t what did it. Not really.

_I didn’t realize I needed to choose._

Of course he hadn’t realized.

Dean wasn’t exactly MENSA material, but he liked to think he wasn’t dumb. He was re-evaluating his stance now, the sheer depths of his idiocy becoming clearer with every word out of Sam’s mouth.

Dean kept glancing over at him, like he thought the other man was going to look different. The hazel eyes and pale skin and broad shoulders stayed the same, even as Dean’s perception of the man inside shifted dramatically.

This whole time, the _whole time,_ Dean had been his master. And Sam had told him so, and Cas had told him so, and he hadn’t. fucking. listened.

And when he’d seen into Sam’s mind, seen the love and dedication and loyalty there, he’d figured, you know, that was it. It was some supernatural confession of love and Dean had accepted it and as far as Dean figured, that should have cleared everything up. They slept together, literally and metaphorically, and Sam lived in his house and they made chili together and they were a couple, right?

Not that Dean had ever _said_ anything.

It had never needed _saying,_ he thought.

God _damn,_ he was dumb.

 

The roadhouse was big and tacky and there were Christmas lights strung around the edges and Dean had been there two dozen times and every time he sat in the same booth.

The parking lot was wet gravel and he drove slowly, wincing at the sounds of stones pinging against the car’s underbelly. He’d make it up to her later.

The minute he put her into park, Sam’s hand was on the car handle but Dean caught his arm, pulling him back.

“I want to ask you something.”

“Okay?”

“Go out with me.”

Sam frowned. Dean talked faster.

“Go out with me. Like a date. Not like I own you and you’re following me because you have to. And not like we’re on a job and you’re following me because I’m your boss. Because I just figured it out- that’s what it’s been, this whole time, hasn’t it?”

“Does it matter?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Sam hesitated, his hand still on the door handle.

“This is about Cas, still, isn’t it? You don’t want me going to bed with him. And I shouldn’t have. I should have asked. I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me that you’d want me to be exclusive for you. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never experienced it and I didn’t know, I didn’t think, I’m _sorry!_ ”

“Hey, hey now.” Dean reached out, his hand stroking against Sam’s temple. Sam’s voice was getting louder, an edge of panic creeping into his voice.

“You got nothing to be sorry for. I didn’t… look, half the time I think I scare you and the other half the time you’re doing shit I can’t even _begin_ to understand and right here just this minute I realized why that is. Cuz I’m trying to make you act like me instead of trying to understand why you act like you.”

Sam shook his head. He wasn’t meeting Dean’s eyes.

“You don’t have to. It’s on me to know what _you_ want, not the other way around. It’s what I’m good at. Don’t waste your time on me.”

“Sam?” He paused, waiting. Eventually Sam would look up at him.

“What?”

“I want to waste all my time on you.”

 _Christ_ that’s sappy.

But as Sam looked up at him, surprised and confused, Dean knew it was also true.

“There are things which are important to you, that you’re not getting from me.”

Sam paused, then nodded.

“But you get them from Cas.”

“I don’t need to, if it bothers you-”

“It doesn’t bother me. That’s not the problem, Sam.”  

Not exactly true. It bothered him a little bit, mostly because the idea of it was giving him a persistent half-chub, but that was a different conversation.

“The night the house got hexed, I saw something. In your head.”

Sam looked away, focusing his gaze solidly on the glove compartment.

“No, listen. I saw how you saw me, and it scared the shit out of me, but I didn’t understand. And then before we summoned Gabriel you tried to tell me, you and Cas both, and I _still_ didn’t get it, but I think I might, now. You kept saying that I owned you, and I thought you were just confused or mistaken and if I just convinced you that you were free, it would all be fine. But you _know_ you’re free, don’t you?”

Sam nodded, but Dean wasn’t waiting for his reaction.

“I own you because that’s the only way you know how to love someone. It’s what you do. And you’ve been telling me this whole time and I wasn’t _listening._ ”

Sam kept his eyes on the glove compartment. Dean focused, trying to sort out the blizzard of thoughts running through his head.

“So I guess we have to figure out how to move forward. Because we’re in two different relationships here. I think you’re my partner, and you think you’re my slave. So do you learn how to be a free man, or do I learn how to be an owner?”

Sam glanced over, sharply, his eyes going a little wide.

“Me, I should be the one-” he paused, frowning, gathering his thoughts. “I’m the one who should learn to change. I’m not a slave and I need to learn to stop acting like one. I just… I don’t know if I can. You can’t understand how difficult it is to _know,_ my whole life, exactly what to do, and then have it suddenly be _gone._ ”

Dean thought briefly of his father but said nothing. It wasn’t the same.

“So ask me.”

Sam blinked.

“What?”

“Ask me. Ask me when you don’t know. And I’ll tell you.”

 

It wasn’t as easy as he’d made it sound. Over the following hour Dean began to seriously doubt whether he was ever really going to be able to understand what was going on in Sam’s head.

They went into the diner and Dean headed straight for his booth, and Sam followed behind. Dean slid into his preferred seat and Sam paused, glancing around. Dean didn’t miss the way his fingertips skated over the tattoo on his forearm.

“What are you thinking?”

“Where do you want me?”

“Across from me.”

Sam nodded and slid into the opposite bench. Dean looked around the building, trying, for the first time in his life, to specifically locate slaves. There weren’t many. A couple of guys had a woman with them. She was sitting next to one of them, his arm slung possessively around her shoulder. The two men were speaking animatedly- she sat in silence, not participating in the conversation. Another man knelt at the edge of a table of teenagers- it wasn’t clear who owned him.

Three of the wait staff had tattoos as well- Dean had always assumed that most slaves were bought up by entrepreneurs as cheap labor. He’d never given much thought to the personal sector- not until he’d decided to buy one for himself.

No one sat opposite their slaves and aside from the occasional glance or comment, no one spoke to them.

Dean realized that any number of these slaves could be tongueless or silenced- would anyone even notice?

He turned back to Sam with a shake of his head, trying to get the morbid thoughts out. There was one menu on the table, sticky and laminated, a list of burgers beside a list of beers. Dean tapped it with one fingertip.

“The one we’re after is the Big Miner. It’s got onion rings and barbeque sauce and it’s better than sex.”

Sam looked dubious. That was alright; he’d see when it showed up.

“Okay, so, talk to me. How do I be an owner?”

Sam smiled a little bit.

“It’s an attitude, more than any particular behavior. It’s the idea that you know what’s best for somebody better than they do. You can manage their time better and utilize their body better.”

“I don’t think I have that attitude.”

Sam looked down, shaking his head.

“No, you do not.”

“I’m not sure I want to develop that outlook, Sam.”

“You don’t have to. Just… meet me halfway? Tell me what you want. Because you don’t. You tell me things that you think I might be okay with you wanting, and I have to adjust to that, and it’s just…” he paused, looking for the word. “It makes it difficult for me to determine what I should do.”

Dean opened his mouth, the phrase ‘do what you want’ already on his tongue, but he shut up before he could vocalize it. He didn’t understand it, but this _was_ what Sam wanted. And he needed to accept that at face value or this was never going to work.

The waitress caught his eye and he signaled her, nodding when she gave him the ‘one moment’ gesture.

“Right now? I want you to get a Big Miner and eat it with me, even though I know you’d rather have rabbit food, because this thing is a religious experience, honest.”

“Alright.”

The waitress had a barcode on her arm, Dean noticed. She was young for it- late twenties, early thirties maybe. She set two glasses of cold water on the table, not meeting their eyes. Sam smiled at her when he ordered. His right hand rested gently on his arm, covering his own marking. It stayed there even after she left.

“Why do you do that? Cover it like that?”

Sam glanced over, then down at his hand. He pulled it back, like he hadn’t realized it was there.

“You looked around the whole place when you came in- do you see any other slaves sitting at the table having a conversation with their owners?” Sam shook his head. “Slaves are reminded of their places in a dozen subtle little ways, and there usually isn’t anything good that comes from being presumptuous.”

“They’d hit you.”

Sam tipped his head to the side, considering.

“Sometimes? Or they just wouldn’t take you out again. There’s a feeling of having disappointed them, that’s what really does it for most of us. We’re already the dregs of society, given the most basic and menial of tasks to accomplish, and if we can’t even do _that_ right…” he trailed off, shrugging.

Sam had talked before about focus. How his whole world narrowed to one task, one person, one goal at a time. And now Sam didn’t have that goal. Because Dean wouldn’t give him one.

“I think you should be a hunter,” he said abruptly, mentally adding the ‘if you want to.’ “I’ve still got my textbooks, they’re a little out of date but they should get you through the preliminary exams, at least. And I’ll help you study.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You’re not a dreg. You belong right up here at the table with me, having a conversation like an equal because you _are._ ”

“Thank you.”

“So what else do you want to know? What am I being vague about, as an owner?”

“Rent,” Sam said immediately. “You don’t own me and I’m not a member of your family, and that means I should owe you money, right? But you’ve never asked for it so I don’t know if I should be doing something else in payment.”

His gaze was steady and Dean realized he knew exactly what the ‘something else’ was.

“My grandpa built the house and it was paid off decades ago. It doesn’t cost me anything so there’s no reason it should cost you either. My turn. Why haven’t you ever taken that stud out?” He gestured vaguely to his mouth, Sam got the idea.

“You said it was kinky. I thought you liked it.”

“I do, but you should take it out if you don’t like it.”

Sam frowned, considering.

“I think I do like it. It’s…” he paused, looking for the words. “It’s hard for me to tell, in a person, what I like. Because I never had a choice and it wouldn’t have mattered even if I had a preference. These, the jewelry, they give me something about myself that I _know_ is good, that I _know_ is attractive. So I like them for that.”

Dean nodded.

“Fair enough.”

“Do you want me to stop having sex with other people?”

A woman at the next table glanced over. Dean ignored her, instead focusing his attention on the table. The condensation on his glass was dripping down onto the table and he pushed his silverware across the puddle, letting the napkin soak up the water and ignoring the fact that he didn’t know the answer.

“I don’t know. Why’d you sleep with Cas?”

“He asked me, and I saw no reason not to.”

“Did you want to, though? Did you like it?”

Sam sighed, turning his palms up.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever ‘like’ sex the way you do, or the way you want me to. It makes other people happy and it doesn’t hurt, so I like it. I’m good at it, so I like it. I know you like it, so I want to do it. But I don’t want it for it’s own sake, or for myself. But I want to do it for you, and I wanted to do it for Cas. And maybe someday there will be other people, I’d want to do it for. So that comes back to my question: do you want me to stop?”

Dean stared at the table, watching the cheap napkin dissolve under the weight of the water it had absorbed. His knee-jerk reaction was to say ‘yes,’ because of _course_ he wanted Sam to stop, because that’s what you _do_ when you’re in a relationship with somebody you care about, you stop fucking other people, that’s just what you _do,_ right? Because being with one person and fucking somebody else is a pretty shitty move, right?

Only, no matter how he turned it over in his head, Dean couldn’t see it as cheating. And not just because there was a distinctly rosy glow to the idea of Sam and Cas together. It just seemed like he and Sam had never really clarified what they were. He’d just sort of assumed they’d both known the kind of relationship they were in.

Then again, you were supposed to start one of those relationships by getting to know each other over coffee or something, not by buying a naked guy in a dirty warehouse and then getting an angel to staple your psyches together, so maybe that was a bad assumption, in retrospect.

So then there was Sam, Sam who didn’t want to have sex but did want to make him happy. And wanted to make _Cas_ happy, which Dean wasn’t so sure about, because wasn’t there supposed to be _some_ kind of exclusivity, when you loved somebody? Sexual, or emotional, or something?

Sam didn’t seem to think so, and Dean didn’t think that sort of conviction was something you could learn. Or fake. Somewhere along the line, Sam had become convinced that affection was about being available, not about being exclusive.

So it was important to Sam that people want him. Need him. Have use for him. And Dean didn’t, not all the time, it was impossible. So maybe Sam needed more than one partner and that was just… Sam.

“I don’t need you to stop.”

Sam’s shoulders relaxed, almost imperceptibly, and Dean realized how much the answer had been weighing on him. He smiled, just a little, and then the conversation was derailed temporarily because the waitress was back with their food.

 

It was the kind of burger that had to be mashed flat unless you were the kind to unhinge your jaw when you ate. Dean watched Sam eyeing his with skepticism, then attacked his own food with the kind of enthusiasm that he really only had for food and sex.

Dean finished his. Sam didn’t, probably because he kept stealing Dean’s fries, beer-battered things that Sam insisted were better than the burger. Dean accused him of blasphemy. When the waitress asked them about dessert they both shook their heads and groaned.

 

Sam got his chance to drive, after dinner. Dean handed over the keys with mock-solemnity, making Sam promise to tread gingerly until they were out of the gravel lot. The sun was going down behind them as they headed east, and Dean leaned his head against the window, watching the telephone poles go by.

“I want to get one bed,” he said after a while. Sam glanced over.

“At the hotel?”

“Yeah. I don’t think there’s any point pretending we’re not gonna share. Might as well call it what it is, right?”

“Sure.”

Sam was grinning, some private joke inside his own head.

“What?”

The day you found me. I offered to blow you and you said that wasn’t why you bought me.” Sam glanced over at him, grinning. “Called it.”

Dean groaned, looking back out the window.

“So I gotta ask,” he said after a while. “I’m not sure I even want to know, but I can’t get it out of my head, it’s driving me crazy.”

“What?”

Dean hesitated, making sure this was a topic he _really_ wanted to broach.

“Cas. I mean, Castiel. The angel.”

“What about him?”

“What was that like? I mean, he’s so…”

Dean gestured, trying to come up with the word.

“… _Cas,_ ” he concluded at last. Sam grinned, keeping his eyes on the road.

“What, like, did he scowl at me the entire time?”

“Yeah! Exactly! I can’t… I just can’t see it, you know? I mean, I can _see_ it, I just can’t imagine him wanting to get our germs all over him.” Dean was laughing at the image of Castiel, the seraph, suddenly finding himself sticky and defiled.

“He saw something in one of your memories- he asked me to recreate it for him.”

Dean paused at that, sobering.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was some feeling you had, while we were having sex. He wanted the feeling, I guess.”

“What feeling? Was it the one where you suck and do that thing with your finger-”

“No, no, like an actual emotion.”

Dean stared at Sam.

“He had sex with you because he wanted to feel an _emotion_? Which one?”

Sam shrugged.

“You tell me, it was your memory. All I could tell was that you were paying really close attention to me.”

“Well, _yeah_.”

“No, not your _dick,_ ” Sam insisted, then hesitated, like he’d said something he hadn’t meant to. “Me. You were paying really close attention… to _me._ ”

He said it like he was realizing it as it was coming out of his mouth.

“Well, I mean… I care about you, you know?”

“Then I guess that’s what he wanted to feel,” Sam said, shrugging.

“What, he didn’t describe it to you?”

“No, he just sort of, played the memory for me. In my head.”

“He can _do_ that?”

“I guess so.”

“Were you gonna mention that at some point?”

Sam frowned.

“I guess it didn’t seem odd to me. Back when he was teaching me to use the bond we exchanged a lot of thoughts and memories. Hasn’t he been doing that with you?”

“Not really. Mostly it’s just light. And colors. And sometimes I felt what you were feeling, back before you learned to close it off.”

Sam was still frowning.

“You mean he hasn’t been telling you things or showing you things while you’ve been doing the transfers?”

“That’s what I’m saying, yeah. Why, has he been playing psychic story time with you?”

“He used to, before you took over the transfers. And he-” Sam paused again.

“What?”

“He wanted me to open it before we had sex. The whole time he was- like, it was like we could see each other, you know? I think he was afraid he was going to hurt me, he wouldn’t do it unless he could see into my head.”

“Kinky.”

“Yeah.”

“So did you do it?”

“Do what.”

“Let him into your head.”

“He insisted.”

Dean paused, mulling that idea over in his head. Sam, who hadn’t protected a damn thing since he’d been bought, protected his side of the bond. _Obsessively._ But if he’d let it down just because Cas _asked_ -

“Would you do it for me?”

Sam glanced over, his eyes widening slightly.

“Open the bond?”

“Yeah. So I can see.”

“You don’t want to see, Dean, remember? We tried that once already.”

“I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t expect it. Let me try again. It’ll be better this time.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped.

“Please don’t make me do this, Dean. What we’ve got here is good, we can keep going like this. Don’t overthink it.”

“We can’t keep going like this, and you know it. You were making progress and then you started backsliding and I don’t know how to help you.”

“I don’t need help. I keep telling you- it’s not _your_ job to worry about _me._ ”

“I worry anyway, Sam, that’s the problem.” He took a breath. “You said that being an owner was an attitude, right? Feeling like you know what’s best for someone?”

Sam eyed him warily.

“You said you didn’t want to pick up that attitude.”

“And you said to met you halfway. So. My side’s open. Meet _me._ ”

“Not while I’m driving. It can be disorienting.”

Dean nodded, flipping through the box of tapes he kept under the seat.

“Fair enough.”

 

They got into Evansville a little after eleven. Sam drove the last seven hours straight through, stopping for gas and nothing else, even when Dean told him to start looking for a motel and then eventually nodded off with his head against the passenger window.

Dean woke up when the engine shut off, Sam announcing ‘we’re here’ in a voice that sounded more tired than the hour called for.

True to his word, Dean got a room with a king bed. He’d never done that before. Not intentionally. With his dad, it had always been two queens. Even when he’d been hunting by himself, he’d stayed in the habit. Two queens, always.

Sam hesitated inside the door, looking over the room like he wasn’t sure where he should be standing. Which was probably exactly the case, Dean realized after a moment.

Dean ditched his bag in the corner, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders and kicking out of his jeans with all his customary grace.

“So’d you drive all this way because you’re trying to put this off?” he asked when a minute had gone by and Sam was still standing in the doorway.

“Partly.”

“Partly?”

Sam shifted.

“Mostly.”

“What if I swear to you that I won’t leave. That I want to see.”

“You can’t swear that. Not when you don’t know what you’ll find.”

“Can you take down, like, just your side? Look into my head and see that I mean it?”

Sam shook his head.

“I know you _think_ you mean it.”

Dean climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged like he did when working with Cas. He gestured for Sam to join him and after a second of hesitation, Sam did. He sat across from Dean, still fully clothed, keeping his distance.

“So I wanna tell you something and I’m not sure how to say it. Because this whole thing is a lot…. I dunno. Deeper than it would normally be.”

Sam regarded him impassively. Dean picked at the hem of his t-shirt.

“I want to try this- I want this to work. And I spent most of today thinking I’d blown it, so sorry if this seems rushed, but I think you should know.” Dean looked at Sam carefully. “I think I love you.”

Sam’s expression didn’t change. Dean waited for something, but it didn’t come.

“Well?”

“That’s why we shouldn’t do this.”

Dean blinked.

“What?”

Sam paused, considering.

“I am working very hard,” he said slowly, “to be someone you can love. Someone who is good for you. But you’re not- and you know this- the first one I’ve needed to be good for. And the things I’ve _done,_ in that regard, disgust you.”

Dean opened his mouth to protest but Sam didn’t stop, and Dean realized he’d probably been practicing this for the last seven hours of highway.

“Ever since you bought me, everything you’ve learned about my past has made you sick. And you think you love me because you think these were things that were _done_ to me, but you’re wrong. Cas saw it, why do you think he hated me straight from the start? Because I _let_ all those things happen, I participated, I helped, sometimes I even _wanted_ it. Sometimes I still miss it, the way everything was _clear._ And I’m doing it again, right now, changing to be who you want me to be. You don’t love me, because there’s nothing real here, Dean. There’s nothing to love- I’m a blank slate that happens to have your name written on it. I’ll be everything you need me to be, but when you get tired of me I’ll go be someone else, _for_ someone else. So if we do this…” he gestured between them, “I don’t think you’re going to see what you want to see.”

He dropped his eyes and Dean could see him fighting to stay still, to stay where he’d been told to be.

“That’s why we should do this,” he said quietly. Sam looked up.

“What?”

Dean leaned forward, stretching the edges of his balance, and just barely got close enough for his lips to brush Sam’s. He closed his eyes, feeling the soft warm skin against his, the hair tickling his jaw, the way Sam opened for him without protest or hesitation. He stayed there, thinking, trying to figure out how to explain.

“I don’t love you,” he said at last, “because of what you _do._ The shit you’ve been through- it terrifies me. You’re right. It frustrates me and it makes me sick. But it didn’t break you. I don’t care what you did- you walked through hell and you came out the other side _strong._ ” He punctuated the statement with a kiss.

“And _brave._ ”

And another.

“And determined, and loyal, and fair, and honest, and kind, and that’s all shit you can’t _fake,_ Sam. _That’s_ what you are, way down under that blank slate. And that’s what I love about you. Everything else is just… incredibly attractive set dressing.”

Sam was shaking his head, Dean could taste salt on his cheeks.

“You’re wrong. You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re _wrong._ ”

“I’m not,” Dean murmured, “and when you’re ready, I want to prove it to you.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was this just, intolerably sappy? I feel like the last few chapters have gotten intolerably introspective.  
> And they were *supposed* to fuck this chapter, but no, they want to talk about their *feelings.*  
> That's the central theme of this book, I swear. 
> 
> Next chapter is action, I swear. Less feelings, more spriggans and What the Fuck is Naomi Up To?


	40. Chapter 40

Sam passed out in his clothes, king bed or no.

The stuff Dean said scared him, and Dean didn’t need any psychic shit to see that. The first time he’d seen into Sam’s head he’d been terrified of the pedestal he’d been placed on, so it was kind of weirdly ironic to realize he’d turned around and done the same thing.

He didn’t make Sam open the bond. He could have. Sam would do _anything_ for him, if he insisted. But he didn’t.

He just held him close, let him get all his protests out. And eventually they both just drifted off.

 

Dean awoke to sunlight shining through the open curtains, and was not at all surprised to see that Sam was already up. He’d been out and come back with breakfast and Dean opened his mouth to say ‘ _you didn’t have to_ ’ and then he realized that Sam already _knew_ that, and so he said “thank you,” instead.

Sam just nodded, but Dean imagined maybe he saw a little glint of copper before he looked away.

Sam sat across from him again, and Dean could tell that he wasn’t quite sure about it. Dean caught his eye, giving him a little nod.

He checked in with Garth, letting him know that he’d made it to Evansville, and Garth said that Frank was still being a hedgy bastard about the whole situation, which Dean had pretty much figured was the case, considering he was there.

They made a supply run, _finally_ getting Sam his own phone, a slim thing with a huge screen that Dean was immediately jealous of. It was slightly less slim with the case, a big thick rubber beast whose packaging claimed could survive being run over by a car. Dean inspected it thoroughly and then pronounced it fit for use on a hunt.

The next stop after that was a gas station, where Dean picked up a collection of heavily salted crunchy things and, more importantly, a map of the local area.

This ended up tacked to the wall of the motel room (“won’t they care about the holes in the drywall?” “No they will not, Sam, I pick these places on purpose”) with a collection of colored stickers mapping out the infested areas.

Fortunately, it was just one infested area- a subdivision on the northwest side of the city called ‘Meadow Lake.’ Dean had a theory which Sam confirmed by checking home value prices in the area- the subdivision was one of those new-construction areas, where the area’s wealthy gathered together to put a buffer between them and the people who rode public transportation. One main road in and out, trees and fields on the other three sides. It made sense- spriggans were tricksters and thieves, it made sense they’d shack up in the good part of town.

They spent the next day and a half setting out an iron perimeter. Like most of the fey folk, spriggans don’t do well against iron, which meant a ring of iron pins around the hem of each pant leg. Dean had forgotten this once, a long time ago, and John had found him wandering lost after stepping on a stray sod a piskie had left in a _parking lot_ of all places _._ So now he put the damn pins in his damn jeans, every single time.

The second part of the perimeter was horseshoes (also iron, of course,) though fortunately symbolic rather than functional. That had been a glorious day in the hunter community, when someone out west had discovered that an inch-wide iron representation worked just as well as the real thing, and it had stopped being necessary to carry a hundred-fifty pounds of iron horseshoes out into the field.

They were roped together using reels of kite string, but they had to be set out at odd angles to ley lines, which meant a long day of walking through the fields surrounding Meadow Lake with a tape measure and a tuning crystal on a string.

Sam thought the whole thing was incredibly interesting and had about a hundred questions, and Dean spent a lot of time thinking about learning from his dad.

Ley line plotting was pretty simple stuff, he’d learned it back when his granddad had still been alive. They’d gone camping sometimes, just plopping down some tents right in the middle of the hunt and working until it was too dark to go on.

This time, he was happy to have a motel room.

 

He and Sam got in late, bone-tired but perimeter complete. Dean took the first shower and was not at all surprised when Sam joined him. He didn’t make a comment, just kissed the other man deeply.

Sam went over his entire body, washing the mud and the grime from his skin, working his way down until he was on his knees. The water was hot, hot enough that Sam’s tongue seemed cool when he took Dean into his mouth. Dean leaned back against the tiles, his eyes closed, lost in the feeling of Sam’s mouth and hands on him.

When it was over, Sam stayed kneeling, sucking gently at Dean’s sensitized skin. The water sluiced through his hair and over his bare back and all Dean could think was _I don’t deserve you._  

 

“Today was good,” Sam said when they’d finally gotten done with the shower. The white hotel towel looked laughably small in his hands. “I think I could do this. Really.”

Dean just stared at him, watching the way he dried off without an ounce of self-consciousness, his motions fluid, almost practiced, and… yeah.

“I think I could do this too.” He cleared his throat. “So is there anything… I mean… can I do anything… back?”

“Let me sleep with you,” Sam answered with a little grin, and Dean laughed.

“Yeah, okay.”

 

 

 

Castiel frowned at the sheet of paper in front of him. It was a drawing- a good representation of a blurry and distorted original- of a wrought iron gate. The gate connected two brick walls, waist high, ornamental, backed by blurry and indeterminate shrubs.

He didn’t like it. The connection wasn’t good. His feeling of the area was nebulous at best, and the distance was several hundred miles. But his window of opportunity was now, and he fully intended to take advantage of it.

He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the original image rather than his reproduction, the panoramic photograph he’d seen on the computer screen after Sam had showed him how to work Google Earth.

The computer, as it turned out, was an _incredibly_ useful tool for learning about humans.

When Dean had incredulously announced that the man Castiel recognized was a _senator,_ Cas hadn’t known what a senator was. But he’d looked it up. And it turned out, there were only one hundred of them, at any given time. Furthermore, they were very public figures- the very first link had lead Castiel to a full list of all one hundred.

Complete with photographs.

That’s how he’d ended up staring once again at the smarmy face of a bastard he knew _very_ well- this time paired with a political affiliation, a state, and a name.

Fergus Crowley.

The name got him an address. The address got him a photo.

The photo got him a Feel.

He pushed the living room out of the way, revealing Dean’s crudely painted summoning circle. It was primitive but it would work.

He went around it several times, making small alterations with a felt-tipped marker he’d appropriated from the kitchen. The lights in the living room buzzed as the power in the room fluctuated, making room for Castiel’s magic.

The angel finished marking his sigils and went, for the second time, to sit in the center of the circle. Last time the candles and oils had chafed against his own magic, but this time, the spell was all his.

He sat cross-legged, breathing deeply, wings wrapped around himself, letting his consciousness expand. It took a small amount of concentration to hold his vessel together, but most of his mind was free to wander.

Very distantly, he was aware of Dean and Sam, but he’d closed them off before he started. There was almost no way they’d be able to stop him, but nonetheless, he didn’t want to have to worry about any more variables than he needed to.

He closed his eyes, crumpling the drawing between his fingers, letting himself Feel the place he needed to be.

The living room began to melt away. He was floating, balancing, ever so delicately on the edge of a precipice. He could hear insects and wind, smell pine and wood smoke, feel the damp chilled air of the Pacific Northwest whispering against his back. It was there, right there, and all he needed to do was lean into it.

He exhaled deeply, leaning backwards into the other place, letting himself fall-

And then he caught.

His eyes flew open, but there was nothing to see. Nothing but darkness, the darkness between places, the utter and absolute _nothing_ that existed between the everything.

He struggled against it, bitter cold seeping into his skin, making his fingers numb and stupid.

There was warmth where he had come from, and where he was going, but here he was drowning in ice and darkness, and he couldn’t go either way. The silver cuffs were dragging him down, drawing him to this not-place, fighting against the surety of the places he existed between.

Of course. They were portal magic. Of course they’d be drawn to the places between. This was their home.

He gathered his magic to himself, holding it like a bauble, letting it warm him, and then he _shoved,_ forcing himself through the nothingness and back into the world.

He hit the ground hard, making somewhat more noise than he’d originally hoped to. He rolled twice and ended up in the shrubs he’d seen behind the brick wall.

Someone was coming, and that was alright, that was expected.

Sam and Dean had a good number of movies dealing with the topic of a lone assailant penetrating into an armed fortress, and this residence could hardly be labeled a fortress.

The man who came into view was dressed entirely in black, his vest emblazoned with the logo of a private security company and, as expected, a rifle cradled in his arms.

Here, Castiel had to gamble that he would be faster than the man with the gun, because a gunshot wound wouldn’t kill him, but it would give away the element of surprise.

He launched out of the darkness, tackling the man to the manicured lawn, snuffing out his life force before he could even shout an alarm.

Castiel landed on top of the body and froze, listening carefully for anyone else approaching. Nothing- no shouts, no running, no alarms. The lawn did not erupt with sun-bright security lights. All was quiet.

He grabbed the body and hauled it back into the shadows, finding a space for them in the corner between two hedges.

He raised his wings and regarded them carefully in the dark. As much as he regretted it, he was forced to admit that this next part would be easier without them.

He closed his eyes, focusing, pushing at the vessel to mold it into what he needed it to be. His nails dug crescent grooves into his palm as the feathers and bones contracted, growing small and dark and withered, finally sinking into the flesh of his shoulders with a smoldering hiss. He turned his head, regarding the dark outlines marking his arms and upper back. They stung slightly but he didn’t think they’d interfere with his plan.

His hands moved over the dead man, pulling at buckles and straps, divesting him of his equipment one piece at a time.

Underneath the black windbreaker, Cas found an armored vest, which he quickly appropriated. The jacket he took as well, covering the pale skin of his arms. It would disguise the fact that the bulk of his scars were missing, and might give him an edge against Crowley, when he found him.

He looked carefully at the gun for several minutes, avoiding the trigger but not finding any obvious method of locking or securing it. He hefted it onto his shoulder, carrying it the way he had seen the guard doing.

His bare feet were silent on the grass and he kept to the edges of the lawn, close to the hedge. When he reached the first corner of the house he stopped and listened. There was one man on the next side. Carefully, he edged closer, keeping an eye on the figure that came into view.

The man didn’t see him, not until it was too late, and Castiel watched carefully as he raised his weapon, pulling one part to the side with a characteristic sound that Castiel recognized. The man’s finger slipped behind the trigger guard and Castiel raised his own weapon, jamming it forward into the man’s chest and following it with a brief touch to the throat that stole his breath away for good.

Castiel caught him before he hit the ground, keeping his gun from clattering against the cobblestone path. He stuffed the body into a shadowy corner beneath a stairway, and waited.

There were two more. One stationed on each of the four sides of the house, patrolling, and the one on the far side had noticed his teammate’s absence. He was signaling to the other three over the radio, and the two remaining men didn’t take long to figure out that they were alone.

Castiel crouched, waiting, beside the body of the man he had killed, the fallen man’s gun slung over his back. His back felt exposed without the weight of his wings, and he twitched phantom feathers in anticipation of the upcoming struggle.

They were coming opposite ways, guns raised, ready for him this time. He could hear the crackle of their radios as they approached. Castiel glanced up at the front of the building. The windows were deeply recessed and it didn’t take much to get himself up into a casement on the second floor. The room inside was dark, unoccupied. He tucked himself up against the glass, listening to the men below him.

They met fortuitously, under his window and slightly to the left. He risked a glance, determining their exact location, and then he was on them, striking them simultaneously on the back of the neck, just below the helmet. They were dead before they even knew he was there.

The front door was unlocked.

Castiel pushed it open and strode into the darkened front room, looking around, listening. The first floor was empty, but there were muffled sounds coming from the basement as well as a bedroom on the second floor. Castiel wrinkled his nose. The whole building smelled of humans in enclosed spaces, sweat and pain and fear.

The basement likely housed the slave quarters. There were none of his own kind down there; whatever other monsters Crowley kept for his amusement were none of Castiel’s concern.

The main hall had several wide French doors. Castiel picked a set at random and went through, looking for the staircase. It took him a minute to find it, a big curving thing with a banister carved from a single huge log. Castiel hated it.

He went up the stairs, light on his feet, following the sound and smell of humans. There were two of them, a man and a woman, talking softly, unaware of the danger. The scent of intercourse was leaking past the closed door, cloying and sweet, and Cas thought suddenly of Sam, and how Sam had felt beneath him when they’d coupled-

He shook his head. This wasn’t the time.

The element of surprise was key here, he couldn’t give Crowley the time he needed to evaluate the situation, put two and two together.

The door didn’t so much fall as _explode_ inward, and before the pieces had finished falling, Cas was following them, raising the rifle he’d taken from the dead guard.

“Fergus Crowley,” he said, “we have things to discuss.”

Crowley blinked stupidly at him from the bed, temporarily at a loss for words. Surprisingly, it was the woman, a brunette in her mid forties, who gathered her wits first.

“This is not a fight you want to start,” she said evenly. “My name is Naomi Milton, I’m an investigator for the FBI, and my teammates-”

Castiel studied her carefully in the half-light of the room.

“Why won’t you call Dean back? You’re distressing him greatly.”

Naomi blinked. Then her eyes narrowed.

“You’re the creature. The seraph.”

“Don’t _engage_ him,” Crowley snapped. He looked back to Castiel. “What are you here for, money? It’s in the vault on the first floor. There’s nothing here. No reason to shoot us.”

“I want to know where the portal is.”

“The what?”

“The portal. To my own realm. Where is it.”

“How would I know?”

“You were there when I was pulled through.”

Naomi’s hand was creeping beneath the pillow and Castiel cocked the gun, the way he’d seen the guard do outside. With his thumb, he pressed the lever he assumed was the “safety.”

Crowley’s eyes widened.

“Oh. Oh, you’re the- the thing. I remember now. Didn’t recognize you without your wings. So if I remember correctly…” he grinned. “Drop the gun.”

Castiel did, unwilling to give up the charade quite yet. It clattered to the floor near his feet, and he hooked his toe underneath it. He could have it in his hands in a minute, if he needed.

“One more time. Where is the portal to my own world?”

Naomi relaxed, the tension visibly leaving the set of her shoulders.

“I heard about your little adventure back in Kansas. The local authorities released you back into Dean Winchester’s custody.” She shook her head. “This does not bode well for his career, Castiel. Assuming, of course, that we turn you in to the proper authorities.”

She looked sideways at Crowley.

“Are we going to do that?”

Crowley shook his head, a smile on his lips.

“No, we are not.”

Naomi kissed his temple.

“You’re twisted.”

Crowley reached out, flicking on the bedside light, and Naomi stood. She was a beautiful woman, utterly unconcerned with her own nudity, and within a moment she was close enough to reach out and rest her fingertips on Castiel’s chest.

“So all I have to do is mark you,” she mused.

“I won’t ask again,” Castiel said quietly. Naomi nodded.

“The cheek, I think,” she said to herself, looking up into Castiel’s eyes, scrutinizing his face. “Just under your left eye.”

Castiel sighed, and reached out his hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't forgotten you!   
> Yes I've been writing terribly evil little one shots and I've even started a *new* epic-length Sastiel fic (365 days, check it out if you're interested in Sam, bad things happening to Sam, Cas doing bad things to Sam, and/or all of the above.) 
> 
> BUT this fic is still slowly congealing in the back of my mind, not as fast as I'd like, not as slow as I'd feared. I'd like to thank everyone who commented on the last chapter, your comments are my motivation, they knock me out of my infinite procrastination loop. 
> 
> BUT ALSO I have two events to attend this weekend and then next week is GISHWHES so I will not be machine-gunning chapters with the frequency at which you have all become accustomed. 
> 
> I'm also working on developing a PHP application for my own personal curiosity and to do some AO3 data analytics. If you'd like to hear more about this extremely nerdy combination of fanfiction and math you can do so [HERE.](http://hazeldomain.tumblr.com/post/147397416076/ao3-data-analytics)


	41. Chapter 41

It took six days to clear up the entire infestation, moving block by block and wiping out the little creatures holed up in basements by the dozens. One of the spells didn’t work like it should have, leading to a re-infestation of an area they’d thought was cleared and extending the job by another day, but in the end, Dean had made a mock sign of the cross and declared in a high falsetto that this neighborhood was _clean._

By that time, the hunters had gone a long way toward establishing an equilibrium between the two of them. Sam found a place at Dean’s side, just a half-step back, not immediately obvious to anyone who didn’t look closely. He sat across from Dean in diner booths without asking, only rarely casting sideways glances at other slaves kneeling beside tables. He woke up before Dean and laid out the day’s clothes and tools and fetched breakfast and then woke the older man up, more often than not, by kissing his way up a thigh.

And Dean _let_ him. His fingers stroked through Sam’s hair, his voice low as he murmured encouragements and praise. And afterwards, Dean pulled the larger man into his arms, their legs tangled together, Dean’s face nuzzling against his chest.

Dean said _thank you_ and _I love you_ and didn’t ask him what he wanted in return. It was enough to be held, to be touched the way Dean touched him. Dean wasn’t trying to turn him on, or pawing at him for his own gratification. He touched him like a lover, soft and gentle, satisfied just to feel the warmth of Sam’s skin on his own.

Sam gave up worrying about whether it would last. Maybe Dean _would_ get bored with him, send him away like the others had. He didn’t know what he’d do then- and he didn’t care. It was worth it just to have this, in the here and now.

 

They finished the job and gathered up their supplies, spending a warm afternoon walking silently through fields, winding up their horseshoe rope. Sam called Garth to verify that the payment had cleared (it had) and they headed back to Kansas.

 

The first thing they noticed was the smell of smoke.

Mostly it smelled like wood smoke, the smell of burning oak or cedar, but underneath there was the definite tang of magic.

It was, Sam figured, better than the smell of burning plastic, which would indicate a house fire. But at the same time, it smelled like _magic,_ and in some respects, that was definitely worse.

“Cas?” Dean called into the empty space. “ _Castiel!_ You in here?”

“ _What?_ ” Came Cas’s reply from his bedroom, and a minute later he was standing in the doorway. The doorway- well, the doorway answered the question of what had been burning. Sam crossed the living room to inspect it more closely.

The wooden door frame was covered in runes, hastily drawn, some of them in Enochian, some of them unrecognizable. The runes had been burned deeply into the wood of the frame, and the surrounding areas were smoky and charred.

“What the hell did you do?”

“I needed a doorway,” the angel grumbled. “My normal method was proving difficult for me.”

Sam looked him over carefully- the angel was wearing the same worn jeans that Sam had given him before they left, but his normally bare chest was now covered with a windbreaker, and under that-

“Cas, are you wearing a bulletproof vest?”

The angel glanced down at it.

“Is that what it’s for? I just thought it was armor.”

Sam asked “why are you wearing armor?” at the same time Dean asked “where did you get _armor?_ ” and then both of those questions were ignored in favor of Sam’s sudden exclamation of “oh my god, Cas, your _wings-_ ” which was in turn cut off by Cas’s sudden decision to lean forward, catch Sam by the collar of his shirt, and draw him down into a deep kiss.

There was silence for a few seconds, as Cas explored Sam’s mouth and Sam let him, and Dean watched in stunned, wide-eyed silence.

“Dean has been thinking about you- _imaginatively-_ for the past three hours,” Cas said when he pulled back, his forehead resting against Sam’s. “It has been incredibly distracting.”

“Okay let’s go back to the wings,” Dean said. His cheeks were getting a touch of red. “And the armor.”

“I did some research while you were gone,” Cas explained. His hands dropped to wrap around Sam’s hips. “It was necessary to ‘go undercover’ as I believe you’d say.”

He leaned forward again, rising up onto his toes slightly in order to reach Sam’s mouth. His body pressed flush against the hunter’s.

“You okay, Cas?” Dean asked, a touch uneasily. “You’re acting a bit… odd.”

Cas spared him a glance.

“You were gone a long time. The isolation was… more difficult than I would have anticipated. Considering.”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“Okay, yeah, we missed you too. So where’d you go undercover? Find anything out?”

“I went to talk to Fergus Crowley.”

Dean blinked.

“The senator?”

Castiel nodded. He stayed beside Sam, their bodies pressed comfortably together.

“He was there when the portal opened. I correctly assumed that he would remember the location.”

“He told you where it was?” Sam asked. “How’d you get him to do that?”

“I broke into his house and killed his lover in front of him,” Castiel answered, leaning forward against Sam again. Sam recoiled.

“You _what?!_ ” Dean snapped. In a moment he’d dropped into a defensive position, drawing his gun. “Down, Cas. Get on your knees. Hands behind your head.”

Castiel eyed him coolly, but did as he was told.

“You were not quite so horrified when I killed the men sent to hex you.”

“That’s different from killing an innocent person in their own bed!”

Castiel blinked.

“I’m disappointed you think so little of me. Naomi was neither innocent nor in bed.”

“ _Naomi?_ ” Dean asked incredulously. Sam took another step away from Cas, to the angel’s annoyance.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

Castiel held his hands out, a weirdly human gesture.

“I went to Crowley’s home with the intention of getting the location of the portal from him. His security team provided me with both the armor and a large weapon, which I used to threaten Crowley and Naomi. Crowley was under the impression that I was still bound to him, which I used to lull the two of them into a false sense of security. Naomi took the opportunity to monologue about how she planned to use me now that I’d been re-captured, and in doing so, she came close enough that I was able to simply reach out and pull the life from her body.” Cas looked evenly at Dean’s gun. “After which Crowley became significantly more cooperative.”

“I told you not to kill anyone else,” Sam said. Castiel shrugged.

“You also placed your faith in an investigative body which has been quite literally in bed with the enemy.” He looked back to Dean’s weapon. “You can put that away, the chances of harming me with it are absolutely negligible.”

“It makes me feel better,” Dean snapped. “Cas, you have to understand the position this puts me in. You went into someone’s house and _killed_ them. I’m a hunter; you’re basically a job, now.”

Castiel frowned, narrowing his eyes.

“You forget. I went to get information from a man who _bound_ and _tortured_ me. He’s dead now because he- and Naomi, as well- expressed both a willingness and desire to enslave me again. Naomi’s presence indicated without a shadow of a doubt that your methods have irretrievably _failed._ Now it is my turn.”

He raised his chin, looking up defiantly at Dean. His eyes flickered a dim white-blue, and Sam could almost see Dean’s recoil as Castiel reached out through the bond. Dean frowned, like he was listening or considering. There was silence for a long time.

“I’m having a hard time favoring a creature over a human,” he said at last. Sam moved toward him, standing close and taking his hand.

“Then favor him over a monster,” Sam said quietly. Dean glanced over.

“You just take his word on it?”

Sam nodded. He could open the bond, of course, look into Cas’s head and see whatever Dean had seen. But he didn’t need to.

“You know what they did to us. Wouldn’t you do the same as him?”

Dean sighed and re-holstered the gun.

“You can get up.”

Castiel rose to his feet, light and graceful even without his wings. He kept his eyes on Dean.

“You believe me.”

Dean paused.

“Yeah. Not sure what that says about me, but yeah.” He shook his head. “I keep going over it in my head like, I should report Naomi to someone, but, who? If she was crooked, who else in the department can we go to? I mean, I’m pretty sure Victor’s good, and Charlie, but-”

Cas was shaking his head.

“No. I’m done dealing with your people. I know where the portal is and I know how it was opened. I intend to close it, for good.” He glanced to Dean.

Dean frowned.

“There’s something else. Something you’re not mentioning.”

Cas looked him dead in the eye.

“The magic they used to tear it open was strong, beyond what humans should be trusted to wield. It would have taken quite a few of them. And this…” he tugged at the silver collar. “This is bond magic. It’s possible, even _likely,_ they opened the passage- and are holding it open- using their own life forces as a counterpoint. The spell lives- and dies- with them.”

“How many people?” Sam asked quietly. He tried to think back, to remember how many of Azazel’s friends might have been interested in magic. Castiel shrugged.

“A few dozen, perhaps. Possibly more. Possibly less.”

“Okay, but you’re immortal, right?” Dean asked. “So can you just kick around here another forty years or so? They’ll die of old age and this whole thing will go away on its own.”

“I’m not making myself clear,” Castiel replied. “This is bond magic. It is utterly symmetrical. When I say that the bond lives and dies with them, I mean the inverse is true, as well. They will not die, not so long as the gateway remains open.”

“But what about Alistair and Crowley? They’re dead, right?”

“It’s possible they weren’t involved in the spell proper. It’s also possible that I’m wrong about the source of their power, and there’s something else holding the bond open.”

“So if we close the portal, we run the risk of killing a few dozen people. Or maybe no one. Good, okay, that’s an easy ethical decision.”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s not a decision I’m asking you to make. I am telling you what I intend to do. If the gateway was opened using the life forces of human beings, it was done willingly and given freely; it _cannot be_ any other way. What happened that day was an attack on my home and my people. I will not allow it to stand and I will not allow it to happen again. I intend to close the portal _regardless_ of the cost.”

Dean slumped a little, then turned his back and went into the kitchen. He set his gun on the table with a quiet _thunk_ , and retrieved three glass tumblers from the shelf beside the fridge.

“I know you don’t eat,” Dean said, pulling a bottle of amber liquid from a cabinet, “but do you drink?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter filled entirely with exposition, no sex at all, sorry, sorry, sorry, I've been trying to get them to fuck for like the last 80,000 words, they won't do it, I'm sorry, I'm sorrrrryyyy.....  
> But now we know some more things about the gate so yay?  
> This chapter is just an exposition bazooka: short, dense, not sexy at all.  
> We're getting closer to the end here, I swear. Swearsies. Swear.


	42. Chapter 42

Cas looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean. 

Dean looked at his drink.

He’d poured a couple fingers into each of the glasses, contemplated it for a couple seconds, then topped it off with coke from the fridge. Two in the afternoon was a little early for straight whiskey, even if you were drinking it to deal with a major mental paradigm shift.

Dean picked up the glass and downed half of it in one swallow, then stared at the second half like he thought it might have an explanation for his sudden desire to side with a creature over his own species.

The whiskey was unforthcoming.

“You’re sure that it was Naomi?”

Cas nodded. He took the seat to Dean’s right, across from Sam. Neither of them made a move towards their drinks, which suited Dean just fine. He was in a use-it-or-lose-it type mood.

Weirdly, Dean was glad his dad wasn’t around for this. John Winchester had been a real stickler for rules- the only reason Dean had ever passed his exams was because of all the time John had spent drilling him, going over the laws and regulations, again and again and again. Get it right. Screw it up and innocent people got killed. There were procedures for a reason.

Dean looked to Cas, then to Sam.

The system had failed both of them. 

Was failing both of them.

Was going to  _ keep _ failing them.

He frowned, and downed the rest of his glass.

Sam reached for his, hesitantly, like he sensed that maybe he was in danger of losing it. Cas mimicked him, and when Sam raised the tumbler to his lips, Cas did the same.

“This is horrid,” the angel said a second later, wrinkling his nose at the offending beverage.

“I’ll get rid of it for you,” Dean responded, taking the glass neatly out of Cas’s hand. His own sat empty on the table in front of him. “You said Crowley told you how they opened the portal. That means you know how to close it, right?”

Cas nodded.

“I just need time to work the spell. Ten minutes, maybe less.”

“And it’s where?”

“Minnesota. A small town near Bemidji. Crowley was good enough to provide me with coordinates.”

“Little town, probably not too well guarded then.” Dean asked. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be an easy in and out.”

Cas shook his head.

“I remember a sizeable facility there- an estate, like the one I was in when you met me.”

“Awesome.” Dean looked sideways at the whiskey bottle again, but thought better of it. “This is out of my range of expertise. I’m used to dealing with supernatural creatures, not humans. Humans are a whole different ballgame.”

“I can deal with humans,” Sam said. “The last estate was raided by police- they had advance warning and they used it to slaughter the evidence- the creatures and some of the worse-off slaves. The trained slaves would probably die before betraying their masters, but the others would flee if they thought their lives were in danger.”

“The creatures, for sure,” Cas added. “If they were released from their bindings they would certainly have the ability to create a sizeable distraction.”

“Is that a good idea?” Dean asked. “Once they’re loose, what’s to stop them from attacking the slaves? Or the town, for that matter?”

“Can we set up a containment spell? Like the horseshoes?”

Dean grimaced.

“Maybe? Iron will contain a lot of stuff, but not everything. The last place had vampires- I can’t see anything good coming from releasing any number of starving vampires. Best case scenario they attack their captors. Worst case, they attack the other creatures, or the slaves, or us.”

“Alright, so I don’t release the creatures,” Sam said with a shrug. “Just the slaves. Easy enough. If this estate is managed anything like the ones where I was held, the slaves are left to manage each other- security is little more than a precaution, since the punishment for running is exceedingly worse than the experience of staying.” He glanced at Dean. “For the most part.”

“But that changes if they know their masters are planning to kill them.”

“From what I’ve seen? Safe money’s on yes.”

“This is all predicated on you already being inside,” Cas pointed out. “How are you planning to accomplish that?”

“Can’t you get me in? Like you got to Crowley?”

Cas shook his head, grimacing.

“It’s very likely that the compound is warded against that kind of magic- it’s a standard precaution for keeping things in, as well as out. Not to mention these-” he yanked at the collar “-make it very difficult to move as I normally do. That’s why I needed to create the doorway in order to return here from Crowley’s residence.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way,” Dean grumbled. Cas ignored him, carrying on as though he hadn’t spoken.

“Creating a doorway is not subtle, and it’s very difficult to do if I don’t already have a Feel for the place I’m going. Making one into an unknown and possibly warded building would be…. inadvisable.”

Sam frowned, considering.

“I could always go in through the front door.”

Dean scoffed.

“Yeah, like they wouldn’t notice that.”

“They absolutely would,” Sam replied. “But I’m willing to bet that Azazel wants me back more than he wants me dead. Especially now.”

“I’m failing to see how this is a good plan.”

“Because if Azazel isn’t there,” Sam continued, “they’ll call him and put me in holding until he gets there. That gives me a couple hours, minimum, to get to the other slaves. It should be plenty of time.”

“Yeah, a couple hours before he shows up and tortures you to death,” Dean clarified. “You’re not a slave. He can’t hold you- He’ll get his rocks off and then he’ll kill you.”

“Not if the plan works.”

“That’s a big ‘if’.” 

Sam frowned, considering. 

“What if we had backup?”

Dean frowned, considering. The local police wouldn’t be much of a help in this situation- they’d need a warrant and the process of getting one was almost certain to tip off the Club that they were coming. Plus, with pockets that deep, there was no way of knowing, locally, who they could trust. He mulled it over.  

“Victor’s pretty sure something’s rotten with Naomi. He might be willing to cover us, if we asked. Charlie, too. That gives us a witch, a hunter, a cop, and an angel.” 

“It’s not nothing,” Sam said, shrugging. 

“You’re overlooking another large advantage,” Cas interjected. He looked back and forth from Sam to Dean. “The bond. We’ll be able to adapt to changing circumstances much faster if we can communicate that way.”

Sam paled. Cas reached out, laying two fingertips on his forehead. 

“You need to let the wall down now, Sam.” 

Sam shook his head violently, pulling away from the angel’s touch. 

“We’ve been over this, I can’t. I’ll find a way to signal you when it’s safe, you don’t need to see all of it.” 

“We  _ have  _ a way to signal, Sam-” 

“No!” 

He stood up suddenly, his hands planted on the table. He stared at the empty glasses in front of him, not looking at the other two. 

“You probably haven’t considered,” Sam said in a low voice, “what’s likely going to  _ happen _ to me before they decide to lock me up. What they’ll want me to  _ do. _ ” 

Dean’s stomach sank, but Sam wasn’t done. 

“You keep talking about how you want to see into my head because you  _ love _ me. But could you watch me do that? With them? With  _ all _ of them?” He turned to Dean, hazel eyes flashing. “Because I could do it. I wouldn’t even hesitate. Do you understand that? The fact that it bothers me so little I wasn’t even going to  _ mention  _ it? That right at my center that’s what I  _ am, _ and that’s what you want to see? You really want to see me?” 

Dean opened his mouth, the protests building in his head. That Sam was wrong, that he was more than that, that they couldn’t let him do that, that they’d find another way- 

He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell Sam that he knew better. Not honestly. 

So he said the only true thing he could think of. 

“Yes.” 

Sam stared at him, and Dean swallowed, trying to find words. 

“If that’s what you are, then that’s what I want to see. And if you’re determined to do this, and watching that happen is the way to keep you safe, then…” he hesitated, licking his lips. “Then that’s what I’ll do.” 

“You don’t mean that.” 

Sam’s voice was barely a whisper. 

“He does,” Cas replied. He was looking at Dean as well. Dean felt suddenly self-conscious, with the two of them staring at him like that. 

Sam’s face broke, and his gaze dropped to the table. His voice was thick when he spoke. 

“I can’t. Please…. I can’t.” 

Dean stood, pulling Sam close to him, ignoring the protesting noises the taller man made. 

“Yeah you can.” 

The muscles of Sam’s back were strung tight under Dean’s fingertips. Cas’s chair scraped against the floor, and when Dean looked over, the angel was shrugging out of his jacket. The backs of his arms were smeared black with something that seemed to go deeper than just skin, and when he discarded the vest, Dean saw that the black markings covered his shoulders as well. 

The seraph shivered, and as he did, the blackness deepened and expanded, rippling outwards like a shadow. It spread from his body across the kitchen, deepening into darkness, solidifying into the familiar shape of the angel’s wings. 

Castiel looked to where Dean was standing, his arms still wrapped around Sam, the two of them gaping wordlessly. 

“We can help you take the barrier down,” the angel said earnestly, as though he hadn’t just performed a minor miracle in front of them. “We can do it slowly, but we should start now.” 

Sam swallowed hard, and then nodded.      

  
  


Cas sat on the living room rug, his legs crossed, his wings splayed lightly out to the sides. Dean sat across from him, close enough that his knees almost brushed against Cas’s when he moved. Sam sat behind him, his chest pressed to the length of Dean’s back, his hands resting easily on Dean’s thighs. 

Dean would have thought that Sam would be in the center, with one of them supporting him, holding him, having his back- but just like the first time they’d slept together, Sam had slipped in behind him. Something in Sam’s head made him feel safer holding, rather than being held. 

Dean let him do what he needed, leaning back into the warmth of his body, letting Sam mantle him. Sam’s back was up against the couch, and Dean once again remembered the early days, when Sam had spent much of his time on the floor, in corners. 

He let out a breath. It would be fine. This was fine. 

Cas leaned forward, and Dean could feel him there, not just physically, but something else- he could always feel Castiel there, in some corner of his mind, with some sense he’d never known he had. Like waking up and knowing, somehow, that there was someone in the bed beside you. Cas was just  _ there _ and as he leaned toward Dean, Dean felt the bond thrumming with energy. 

Cas’s hands rested on Dean’s knees, palms down over Sam’s, but it was Dean he was looking at. 

“I’m going to come through you,” the angel told him, and there were sparks of white-blue circling his irises. Dean swallowed. 

“Okay.” 

“Close your eyes and focus your breathing. I can force this to happen, but it will be much easier for everyone if the two of you can allow me to do what I need to.” 

“I’m not gonna lie, I have no idea how to do that.” 

“It comes to you,” Sam said quietly. Dean took a deep breath, letting his eyes slide shut. 

He could still feel the two of them, Sam’s solid heat and Castiel’s bright energy. 

He focused on breathing. In and out. Slow and easy. 

Cas’s presence brightened, just slightly, and he felt the pressure, behind his pubic bone, that he’d come to associate with the bond. Sam’s breath was hot on the side of his throat, and he tried to match his own breathing to the other man’s. 

The pressure increased, and Dean realized he could sense himself, as well. With his eyes closed, Castiel saw him as a form of bright, roiling green, light and dark places mixing and curling within him. It was nothing like Castiel’s pure, luminous white, but the angel didn’t seem to hold it against him. 

Sam shuddered and then, suddenly, there was another form there- a dull, lustrous copper, more dark than light, but brightening by the second. Sam tried to pull back, to tear his hands away, but Cas held them firm, pushing them down into the tops of Dean’s thighs. 

“It’s all right, Sam,” he murmured, and then his hands were on Sam’s shoulders, steadying him. Sam’s face was buried against his shoulder, and Dean could feel hot tears against his skin. “I love you.” 

The copper light flared, the dam bursting wide, and for the second time, Dean  _ saw _ . 

Sam was his. Sam loved him, would give anything for him,  _ belonged _ to him in a way he never would have predicted in that dark warehouse, not in a thousand years. 

And it scared him, it terrified him to be given something that precious, but he didn’t close the bond. He didn’t look away. 

Sam wanted to belong to him, and he could understand that now, because he wanted to belong to Sam, too. 

Dean looked at Sam, saw the two of them through Castiel’s eyes, green and brown, and he accepted. 

The light changed, immediately but almost imperceptibly, the green spreading over the copper like a patina, the copper brightening the dark places in him until he shone. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, gasping for air that had vanished from the room, because Sam’s light was flooding through him and he  _ remembered. _

He remembered dirty hotel rooms and hunger and fear and he remembered lavish parties and gold body paint and confidence and pleasure and he remembered bright lights and desperation and pain. 

And then Cas was there, guiding them apart, keeping them from sinking too deeply into each other, and Dean reached out for him. Castiel was freezing, an icy counterpoint to Sam’s torrid heat, and when Dean looked closer, he could see cracks through the blue white of Castiel’s light, broken places that had only just begun to heal. 

The house seemed suddenly filled with ghosts, laughter and memories that Dean could hear over the sounds of singing. A choir, a memory of an infinite chorus, and it sang through his blood until he ached from missing it. 

He was alone, one of a million million, a single voice in the dark, and Dean shivered, feeling the cold sink into his bones. He realized distantly that it was Cas that he felt, not himself, and he reached out, pressing his hands to the angel’s frigid skin. 

It was like the life force transfers, he could feel a part of himself spreading into Cas, and part of him into Sam now, too, and he vaguely wondered if he was going to pass out again. Heat surged through his hands, sinking into Castiel, and green surged through the cracks, filling the empty places, even as he was engulfed in a blanket of auburn fire. The angel shifted to his knees, his fingers digging into the couch on either side of Sam, and his body was pressed flush with Dean’s. His lips found Dean’s and light poured through the connection. 

And then, somehow, it began to balance. Dean was no longer trapped between ice and fire, light and darkness, and the colors he saw roiling inside himself moved a little slower, the lights and darks a little less distinguished. 

Cas’s mouth was warm skin rather than hard ice, and Dean kissed him slow and easy. The angel’s wings engulfed them and Sam’s arms tightened around him. His eyes flew open. 

Cas looked down at him with concern, and Dean wasn’t surprised to see that there were now three colors circling the seraph’s irises. 

“There were so many,” Dean breathed, and Cas smiled, pressing another kiss to his mouth. 

“Yes. And I will see them again soon, as you will see the ones you have loved. But here and now we have only us.”

“Do you want him?” Sam asked, and Dean didn’t know how to answer. 

Cas did, uttering a simple “yes” before leaning in to kiss Dean again. Dean was vaguely aware of Sam’s hands on him, slipping beneath his shirt to skim along his belly. He let his own hands run up Castiel’s back, feeling him tense slightly when they reached the soft, downy feathers at the base of his wings. His body froze but Dean could see the shape in Cas’s mind, and he set out a reassurance even as he let his fingers dig deep into the muscle beneath the tertial feathers. Cas shivered and relaxed, letting the appendages rest against Dean’s palms. The hunter’s fingers carded through the feathers and Cas shivered again, letting out a little moan. 

“Being physical has it’s upsides,” Sam murmured, and Dean laughed a little. The feel of Cas’s wings beneath his hands was incredible- even setting aside the rest of the angel’s physique, he felt like he could do this all day. 

The rest of Castiel was not so easily forgotten, he realized as the angel shifted against him. Sam’s hands were the only thing between them, and Sam had been busy working open the buttons of his shirt. 

_ Sneaky bastard, _ he thought to himself, and Sam chuckled in response. 

_ Just following orders, _ the other man answered, and before he could respond to that, Sam and Cas ganged up on him, taking the hem of his shirt in four hands and pulling it quickly and efficiently over his head. 

“No fair,” he sputtered when his face was free of the cotton undershirt. “It’s two against one, here.” 

“We’re just talking, Dean,” Cas said, his hands exploring Dean’s now-bare chest. “You could hear us, if you listened.” 

Dean closed his eyes, trying to focus his breathing, trying to tune into the connection between the three of them. He didn’t hear words, not exactly, but he could… sense something. He focused, trying to turn the gentle buzzing into some language he could recognize. 

“Not like that,” Sam whispered in his ear, and the bond echoed with his words, not with sound, but in some other form that solidified as Dean focused. 

And then he could feel it, could see it, and it wasn’t a buzzing so much as a stream of words and images and sensations and- and- 

“Oh.” Dean said quietly. “Yeah, okay.” 

Sam took hold of his wrists, lifting them and putting them where Cas wanted them, on the joint of his wings. Dean stroked along the feathers, feeling the oily softness of them, and Cas let out a breath like a pant, raising the limbs, splaying the feathers for him. 

Sam’s hands delved beneath the waistband of Dean’s jeans, thumb popping the button on the way down. He palmed Dean’s hardening cock through the thin cotton of his boxers, and Cas hissed in response. The angel pulled at the rough denim, hiking it down Dean’s thighs, and Sam held him steady while he wriggled out of them. 

He could feel them, he realized as Cas pressed their mouths together again. He could feel himself, held flush to Sam’s broad chest, Sam’s cock jutting against the small of his back. He could feel Cas against him, could feel his legs wrapped around the angel’s hips. He could feel his own hands on the angel’s wings and when he dug his fingers in, his vision whited out and he heard Sam’s answering hiss of pleasure. 

“God, Cas,” Dean groaned, and he couldn’t get further because Sam’s hands were on his cock, stroking hard and firm, and his fingers were clenched in Cas’s wings, and Cas’s hands were on his hips, lifting them and fitting between his spread thighs-

He could see himself, he realized. He could see himself through Cas’s eyes, through Sam’s, a sheen of sweat rising on his skin as Cas pushed into him, filling him impossibly full. It was too much-

_ Everything I am, living inside of you, _ Dean thought, or Sam thought, or Cas thought- one of them thought and it didn’t matter because Dean wasn’t trying to distinguish any more, too lost in the feel of hands and mouths and the tight, hot sheath of his body- 

He wasn’t sure when he came, not exactly, but he knew when every nerve in his body turned to lightning. His back arched and one of them cried out and Cas came down on top of him, the three of them in a splayed tangle of limbs. 

“Being physical  _ does _ have some upsides,” Cas said, when they’d caught their breath a little bit. Dean was busy watching the auras that the things in his living room had suddenly obtained. They were fading as he came down off his afterglow. “I’m glad I got to do this again.” 

Sam laughed. 

“Always happy to oblige you in your investigations, Cas.” 

“I’m being sincere,” Cas said. He shifted onto his knees, pulling his wings close to his back. He regarded the two humans in front of him. “I think I may miss you when the portal has closed.” 

Sam’s body tensed, and Dean got a flicker of something through the bond. 

“What do you mean, you’ll miss us?” 

Castiel was rolling his shoulders, almost too nonchalantly. 

“When the portal closes I’ll be on the other side. With my brothers and sisters.” 

Dean was paying attention and he didn’t miss the pang of apprehension. 

“That  _ is _ where you’ll end up though, yeah?” 

“Where else would I go?” Cas asked, and Dean didn’t know how to answer. 

Dean looked to Sam, saw Sam’s confusion as well. The question broached the distance between them, and Cas scowled. 

“It’s not important. You don’t know about my people and I am not going to tell you.” 

And then, somewhat unexpectedly, he leaned forward again, pressing a gentle kiss to Dean’s mouth. 

“Get some rest. We have a long journey tomorrow.” 

Dean didn’t miss the note of sadness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liiiiiiiiive! 
> 
> Alright, this chapter took a really long time to solidify. I have many excuses. 365 grabbed my attention like.... well like a deranged angel in a truck, heh, and wouldn't let me go for several days. Then there was the insane jubilee that was GISHWHES. Then there was the incredible backlog of work when I went back to the office AFTER GISHWHES.   
> And also my motivation and mood are bouncing all over because I have successfully become a carrier for a smol bean. I'm getting pictures taken on the 9th, I'll be sure to tell you in detail all about my grainy black and white fluttery thing. Hopefully it's taken up residence in the correct body part. 
> 
> But can we all just take a minute and appreciate the sex? This has been a long time coming. This was hard to do. I feel like it worked. Let me know what you think. 
> 
> Just a couple more chapters to go now.....


	43. Chapter 43

Cas retreated, tucking himself into the couch opposite the one Sam was backed against. He settled his wings back behind him and regarded the humans as though he were waiting for them to do a trick.

Dean realized that he was still totally naked, in counterpoint to Cas’s jeans and the fact that Sam was still dressed. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to care. Sam’s legs bracketed his, the other man’s long arms encircling him, and when Dean leaned his head back, it rested against Sam’s shoulder like they were made for each other.

Sam smiled, and though Dean couldn’t see it, he could feel the other man’s pleasure resonating back through the bond.

“Could you hear me thinking that?”

“Yeah.”

“Made for each other,” Cas supplied. Dean scowled.

“So I’m a poet in my own head, sue me.”

He didn’t stop leaning against Sam’s shoulder. Sam’s thumb was making idle circles around his arm and for the first time, Dean realized that Sam was doing it on purpose. It wasn’t an idle motion, Sam was very carefully-

The thought retreated and Dean chased it, coming back with a whole set of very detailed actions and circumstances under which to use them.

Sam froze. Dean could feel him scrambling, trying to recover, trying to find an explanation.

“You’re fine,” he murmured, shifting against Sam to remind him he was there. “It feels nice.”

Things went through Sam’s head very quickly- satisfaction at his success, happiness at Dean’s happiness. Pride in his training and then a stifling, an attempt to shove it down. Sadness that these actions did not come to him naturally, that he could not enjoy what Dean wanted him to.

Dean laced his fingers through Sam’s, listening to all these things happen in a second.

“I’m sorry,” Sam mumbled. “I didn’t want-”

And then he paused, listening. Dean squeezed his hand, letting him.

“Told you,” Cas said, and the pressure against the bond increased as Sam raced through Dean’s mind, searching for a condemnation that wasn’t there.

“You _love_ me,” Sam said hollowly. And then, “both of you, you- how _can_ you?”

Dean’s eyes flicked to Cas, but the angel was unchanged, regarding them silently. Nobody spoke- the answers to Sam’s question could be seen easily through the bond.

Sam leaned forward, letting his forehead rest on Dean’s shoulder. There was no point trying to hide his face- the disbelief and awe thrummed through the bond as clearly as though he were speaking out loud.

“Thank you,” he whispered, finally. His long arms folded around Dean’s body, holding him close, and Dean wondered if Sam had ever believed- really believed- that he could be loved.

Sam laughed a little, wiping his face against his shoulder.

“I’m not as hopeless as all that, am I?” he asked, but the truth was thrumming through his mind, ice cold in its severity. Dean and Cas reached for him at the same time, treading lightly through the bond to soothe and encircle him.

For a while, they just sat like that, listening to each other, feeling the reassuring presence of each other. At some point, Dean began to get cold, and Cas felt it and passed him a blanket.

“We can’t go like this,” the angel said after a while. “We need more time.”

Dean didn’t ask him what he meant. It was plain that neither human understood, and in any case, he was too comfortable to talk. Castiel let out a breath.

‘ _You two are like children,’_ he said through the bond, and Dean understood the full meaning of the words- that Castiel could send thoughts, ideas, plans, all clearly defined and articulated. That was the sort of communication they’d need in order to succeed, and it was communication that Sam and Dean were not yet capable of. They shared in broad strokes, emotions and memories. They’d need to be more specific if they planned to orchestrate a battle plan this way.

“A time,” Castiel said out loud. “Send a time.”

Dean felt Sam at the edge of the bond, sending him the sky, orange and red, the sun kissing the horizon.

“Sunset?” Dean guessed. Sam frowned.

“Eight PM.”

Dean picked noon, sending the time to Sam as clearly as he could.

“Lunch,” Sam guessed. Castiel laughed.

‘ _You see what I mean,_ ’ he said, and Dean had a sudden glimpse of _home,_ of young seraphs reaching out in joy and excitement, proudly letting their first thoughts cross the spaces between themselves and their families, uncertain voices joining the choir that never stopped-

The homesickness hit him like a physical force and Sam’s arms tightened around him, letting him know the other man had felt it as well. Castiel’s face remained stoic, showing no sign that he knew what he’d shown them.

“Was he- were they yours?” Dean asked, but Cas just shook his head.

“My people… I don’t think there is another seraph that would…”

He stopped, frowning, then rose to his feet and crossed to the door to his own room. He considered the doorway for a moment, chewing absently on his lower lip. Then he reached out, laying his palms against the wood, and the burned runes glowed momentarily blue.

“A seraph is a mixing of spirits, it requires two complimentary beings, gifted with traits that enhance and beautify the other. It is pointless to create, otherwise. The resultant child is… off balanced.”

The runes faded, leaving unblemished wood behind. Castiel surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. He flexed his fingers absently.

“Out of all my people, there is a reason that I was the one to hold the gate steady.”

“You’re off balance,” Sam said quietly. Cas nodded. He didn’t look away from the doorway.

“I don’t add to the harmony,” he agreed. “It’s why I was watching the earth when the gate opened. It’s why I was the one to have to hold it. I was the closest to- to you.”

“Because we’re off balance too,” Dean said quietly. Cas only smiled.

Then he shook his head, dismissing the topic.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to be done for it. I can’t understand you, and you can’t fix me. It was an experiment that failed, and now I want to go home. That’s all.”

“You don’t need fixing,” Dean protested, but Cas waved him off, turning back to where the two humans were sitting.

“We need to work on your communication. Times. We’ll start with times.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. That's how many spoons I have this week. 
> 
> I also totally forgot to mention it, but [On Sale has a theme song now.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49ZhrgtR-S4)
> 
> In other news I totally undermined myself here by completely overestimating how emotionally prepared I was to deal with a major character death today. [I was seduced by amazing fanart.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7662202/chapters/17447392) (Their mockumentary!verse is also fantastic if you're into unapologetically unhealthy garbage ships. Which I am.) 
> 
> Uh.... I don't have much else to say, sorry. The quality of my author's notes has dropped dramatically ever since I started putting all my snark on tumblr.


	44. Chapter 44

By the time they got hungry enough to break for dinner, Sam and Dean were both capable of sending static images. Sam had come up with the idea, sending Dean an image of red clock numbers, glowing in the dark. Cas had scoffed at it, calling it a simplification bordering on cheating, but their accuracy had improved almost immediately.

The way they learned wasn’t like young seraphs. Human minds did not organize things the way angel minds did. They developed in isolation and as such, lacked the universal syntax that formed in the minds of a collective.

They spoke to each other in broken, simplistic phrases. Castiel would have abandoned the entire experiment in despair if it weren’t for the genuine _mirth_ the humans shared when they realized they’d successfully communicated a thought. More than once, they stumbled on something that made them collapse into laughter. Castiel didn’t understand the reference, but he felt the joy that came from them, and he laughed as well.

It wasn’t a harmony. The three of them did not make a choir. But as Castiel listened to the two of them babbling to each other, he found he missed the song a little less.

It was getting dark by the time they stopped to eat. Cas watched silently as Dean dressed and Sam moved to the kitchen to reheat something frozen.

Dean saw him watching and turned with a grin.

“See something you like?”

“Yes,” Castiel answered simply. He could tell that Dean was making a joke, but he couldn’t understand the meaning, so he just answered honestly. “I’ve come to have a grudging admiration for the human form. I suspect it has something to do with the vessel’s reaction to intercourse.”

Dean rolled his eyes, which Cas didn’t think was called for.

 

Dinner was frozen pizza, which Dean insisted he try. Castiel pretended to hate it, mostly in the hopes of not being asked to try more things.

The two hunters finished it off themselves, all the while making broken eye contact across the table and sending each other simplistic phrases and half-formed mental images.

Dean tended to send jokes and sexual innuendos, refusing to take any of it too seriously. There was still a part of him that couldn’t quite accept the idea of sitting at his kitchen table and communicating telepathically with a man and an angel he’d taken as a lover a few hours before. Castiel thought maybe that idea would settle in with time.

Sam stuck to facts. He tried to convey times, places, and faces. Things that would aid them in the fight to come. His mind was a practical counterweight to Dean’s playfulness. Even still, every so often, he would have a thought that overflowed the boundaries of his own mind, an affection or appreciation so profound that the bond resonated with the name of the one whose praises he sang.

He caught it quickly when it happened, trying to stifle it. He retreated back behind his wall, hiding from the repercussions. His eyes would drop and for a moment he would fill with fear; that he was presumptuous, that his advances were unwanted. That his affection was inappropriate or unseemly, and that the other two would be displeased at it.

When this happened they would wait, sometimes reaching for his hands, sometimes letting the bond speak for them. They would wait for him to let the barriers back down. It took time, but he could do it, and when he did, he was always pleasantly surprised to find that he was, still, loved.

It wasn’t a harmony. Combined, their minds were chaotic and boisterous, nothing like the serene melodies of the seraphs.

Cas thought maybe he understood it now. Why they reached for each other even when they got nothing back. How they lived and interacted in such silent isolation and still managed to care for each other. They were not expecting a complimenting melody. Their affection was self-contained, existing entirely within themselves. They reached for each other in order to feel the light that bloomed within themselves when the other was near.

Being loved in return inspired new joy, but it was not the cause. Love existed with or without reciprocation.

Cas thought of the time he’d spent at home, alone and quiet as possible, listening to the others and watching the earth. And he understood.

He missed the harmony, but he didn’t add to it.

He thought maybe he added to this.

 

After dinner, Dean got on the computer and found a map of Bemidji. Castiel gave him Crowley’s coordinates, and they ended up with a small red X in the middle of an otherwise featureless patch of woods.

“You’re sure that’s the place? There’s no way in or out.”

“That’s where Crowley said it was,” Cas answered. Sam went back to the computer, zooming in on the map and switching it into satellite view.

“It’s a private road,” he remarked, pointing. “Look, it branches south off route 12 near Pennington. It’s not named, but you can see where the path was cut through the trees.”

Cas looked at the image on the screen- sure enough, a small track wound through the woods, culminating in a small clearing with a parking lot.

“Does it look familiar?” Dean asked. Cas shook his head.

“I had a hood on when they moved me. I never saw any of the places from the outside. But it looks like it’s about the right size.”

“Alright. For now, let’s assume that this is our place.” Dean glanced to Sam. “You’re our advance. If it’s the wrong place, you’ll let us know. If it’s the right place…”

“Then I get to the slave barracks,” Sam interjected, glossing easily over Dean’s pause. “I tell them to head north. That’ll take them straight up to the main road.”

“Once everything’s moving, we’ll put a call in to local authorities. Here and here.” Dean gestured to the map, pointing to the two towns closest to the compound. “Plus Bemidji. The Club’s probably got a couple cops in their pockets, but if we call into three different departments with news of a medium-scale rebellion, news will spread too fast to cover up.”

“Not to mention, they’ll be bringing in creacon agents from all over the state,” Sam added.

“Dean and I use the pandemonium to get inside, find you, and close the gate.”

“With Charlie and Victor covering us, if we can convince them to help,” Dean concluded. “Speaking of which… I should call them. Should probably give Garth a heads-up, too, if there’s gonna be that big a pull on creacon agents.”

Dean flipped his phone open, dialing as he stepped outside, onto the darkened porch. Cas could hear the rumble of his voice as the hunter greeted whoever was on the other side. Cas turned back to Sam.

“You’re not nearly as confident as you’re pretending to be.”

Sam squared his shoulders.

“I can do this.”

“I have every faith in you. But you’re frightened nonetheless.”

Sam let out a laugh.

“Well, yeah. The whole plan is based on the hope that Azazel will want the chance to torture me before he kills me. And waiting for him…” Sam’s face went momentarily blank. “I don’t have illusions that I’ll be treated kindly.”

Cas could see it in his mind, the grim determination and the fear. Sam was confident he could withstand whatever they planned to do to him. Cas could see the memories running through his head, the pain he had endured, the scars he’d been left with.

“You could walk away,” Cas said quietly. Sam glanced up, meeting his eyes. Cas kept going. “You stand to gain nothing from this. At its heart, this is my battle. Not yours.”

Sam hesitated, dropping his eyes again. His fingers twisted together, then released. He watched them, choosing his words.

“Do you know why Azazel sold me?” he asked after a while.

“No.”

“Because I was willful. I defied him and challenged his authority.”

Castiel frowned.

“You did everything you could to please your masters. I’ve seen memories of it that go on for years-”

“There was someone else,” Sam interrupted. “A girl. They were hurting her and… and I told them to stop. I offered to take her place. Azazel was furious. He took it out on both of us, and when he was done with my punishment, he sold me.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?”

Sam smiled, letting out a breath.

“I asked myself that a lot. Why he would sell me for a pittance instead of recouping my cost or just having me killed. And I think it’s because my punishment wasn’t over. I think he wanted me to die in a work camp, knowing I was worthless.” He cast a fond look out the window, to where Dean’s silhouette was visible against the darkening sky. “Azazel didn’t think anybody would take a risk on me. But Dean did. And Dean says there’s more to me than the things I fake to make my masters happy. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe I’m doing this because you need me to make it work. But maybe he’s right, and I’m doing it because out there, they’re hurting _somebody,_ and I’m still willing to trade places.”

Cas opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, Dean came back through the door, a wide grin on his face.

“They need two days, but they’re in.”

Cas nodded.

“Two days will give us time to work on communication.”

“Right. The only other question is when to head up- the earlier we go, the more recon we get, but it also increases the risk of getting caught.”

“We wait,” Sam said instantly. “They hexed the house, which means they know our faces. The longer we stay there, the greater chance we have of being recognized.”

“So we wait,” Dean agreed. “We can get the layout from Sam once he’s inside.”

Cas looked between the two humans. Both of them were ready to do this to help him- though it might get them killed, and they knew it. He was suddenly filled with gratitude, and they must have felt it through the bond. Sam looked down, while Dean gave him a rakish smile.

“Who wants to get old, anyway?” he joked, and Castiel saw a flash of two men, their hair streaked with gray, driving down an empty highway-

Dean pulled back, looking away.

“Well I don’t know about you guys, but I need some sleep.”

 

That night, Sam had a nightmare.

Castiel saw it as it started, from his customary place by the stream. He watched the two humans and their nonsensical hallucinations, smiling to himself as they moved through their imaginary worlds.

And then Sam’s went dark, invaded by men with blank faces, men who held him down, men who hit him-

Castiel was on his feet in a second, bolting for the house.

Sam whimpered in pain and fear, and Cas pushed his way into the dream. He tried to take Sam away, to separate him from the faceless men, but it was like trying to fight smoke. Sam’s mind controlled this place, he couldn’t be saved from his own fear.

The door to the bedroom stood open and Cas was inside in a second, gathering the human against him and shaking him awake. His wings encircled the trembling man, blocking out the world. The noise roused Dean from sleep, but he only needed a moment’s connection to Sam and Cas to understand what had happened.

Sam quieted, letting Cas hold him inside the dark shell of the angel’s wings. Cas sent reassurances through the bond, telling them both that they were safe.

They eventually fell back asleep, but Cas didn’t leave. He stayed, watching over them, and there were no more dreams.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes. We move forward. Once more into the breach. 
> 
> My goal (lookit me being productive) is to have this done and half-proofed by Christmas. It's gonna be a novel you guys, I swear. 
> 
> On that note, I'm looking for an illustrator. I want some cover art and some scenes drawn for inside the book. Maybe like 5? Scenes from the inside? Pencil-sketch-type black and white. So.... if anybody has commissions open and wants to talk, I'm at tech.by.melissa@gmail.com. 
> 
> I'd like to hire somebody who actually read/liked the story, rather than just a random artist off tumblr or something.


	45. Chapter 45

The drive north was tense, to say the least.

Charlie and Victor went up in their own cars, taking slightly different routes to try to assuage some of their shared paranoia. Cas, Sam, and Dean were heading up in Dean’s car, and Sam could tell that it was taking every ounce of Dean’s self-control not to turn around.

“We’re not ready,” he said for the dozenth time. Sam sighed, reaching out to take his hand. He could feel Cas making an equivalent gesture through the bond.

“We’re as ready as we’re going to be,” Sam answered back, for the dozenth time. “Every day we delay, they’re building up resources, too. And they can do it faster than we can. We can’t sit around waiting for them to hex the house again.”

Dean looked to Sam, and there was pain in his eyes.

“I’d give anything not to have you do this.”

“I know,” Sam answered. He straightened his shoulders, trying to look confident. “Anyway, Charlie says she’s pretty sure she has a spell that can cloak me. I’ve got a good thirty minutes before they can catch me. I’m pretty sure I can find the slave barracks in that time. If it’s anything like the last place, we’ll be dealing with about a hundred club members and a little under two hundred slaves. Not counting creatures. Two hundred slaves making a break for freedom is a hell of a diversion. More likely than not, they’ll never even see me.”

The optimism was a total lie. Sam knew it, and he knew the other two could see it in his mind.

Outside the window, the landscape got greener. They drove on in silence.

They met up in a park about a quarter of a mile from the entrance to the club. Charlie and Victor parked end-to-end, blocking Dean’s car from sight. It was probably pointless- it was just after four in the morning, and far too dark to see anything from the road anyway.

Dean began laying down a chalk circle for the concealment spell, but had to stop when Charlie pulled him up into a bear hug.

Sam barely had time to laugh at Dean’s confusion before it became clear that he would not be spared a similar treatment.

“I’ve been so worried for you guys. Ever since I heard what happened with the hex bag, I’ve been expecting to hear you’ve been offed!”

“We’re fine, Charlie,” Dean grumbled, but he was touched by the concern. Sam smiled.

“We’ve had a guardian angel,” he added, winking at Cas. Cas stared blankly back.

“We’re going to need a hell of a lot more than that to make this work,” Victor griped. “I’ve got a written explanation for all this laying on my desk back in Salina, in case I don’t come back, but still.” He tipped his head back, staring up into the darkness. “If the corruption on this thing goes as deep as you say it does, I don’t even know if it’ll do any good.”

“Well,” Dean mused, turning his flashlight back to where he was still drawing the circle, “before, you were trying to nail them on slave abuse and the unauthorized slaughter of creatures. Maybe a couple dead free men will change the scope of the investigation.”

“I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that,” Cas said.

“You and me both,” Dean said cheerily. “Sam, you’re up.”

Sam steeled himself and went to sit in the center of the circle. This was Charlie’s spell, not Dean’s, so he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

As it turned out, the answer was crystals. Charlie had brought along a plastic toolbox filled with a dozen different crystalline minerals. She arranged these around the circle, occasionally pausing to step back and survey her work.

After she’d gotten them how she wanted them, she went back to the toolbox and returned with a small, circular gold cage, on what appeared to be a long necklace. This, she hung around Sam’s neck, adjusting the length of the cord until the cage rested just above his belly button. Sam inspected it in the beam of his flashlight. There was a clear crystal inside, six-sided, pointed on both ends.

“It’s a Herkimer diamond,” Charlie explained. She’d moved back to the edges of the circle, and she was moving a large, rough emerald along one inch at a time, pausing and then repositioning it again. “Your energy is centered in your second chakra, so that’s the best place to put it, for this. Since it’s basically your life force that powers the spell.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Victor asked.

“Nah,” Charlie answered, abandoning the emerald in favor of rotating a set of small rubies. “Human life force is basically endless. Unless you’re trading a huge chunk of it to some deity, most spells use so little it regenerates in a few hours.”

“And we’re _not_ trading chunks to a deity, right?” Dean asked. Charlie shot him a look.

“Of course not. Do I look like a dark witch to you?” She settled the rubies, then stood back, surveying the whole scene in the darkness. “We’re repositioning his aura so that he resonates slightly out of sync with the rest of Gaia. It’ll effectively make him invisible until the spell wears off.”

Whatever she saw, it seemed to satisfy her. She retrieved a small brass bowl filled with an assortment of herbs and dropped a match into it, muttering something under her breath as she did so.

Sam felt a sickening lurch, like he’d just awoken from a dream of falling. Charlie grinned.

“Perfect. Come on, in the car. We’ve only got half an hour to get you where you need to be.”

Sam cast one last glance back at Dean and Cas as he got into the back of Charlie’s Volkswagen. They couldn’t see him, but they could feel him through the bond. Dean waved. Cas just stared.

 

Charlie parked at the far end of the parking lot. If anyone approached, the plan was to pretend that she was lost, but the whole place was still and quiet. She left the engine running but got out of the car, opening the back door and pretending to search the backseat for something. Sam slipped unseen out of the car, squeezing Charlie’s shoulder in a silent ‘thanks’ as he passed.

He crossed the blacktop quickly, heading for the main doors. The place was dressed up like a large hunting lodge, orange light spilling from inside through large plate glass windows. With any luck, the front doors would be open.

Sam palmed the set of picks in his pocket. Dean had been showing him how to open locks for the last two days, and while he didn’t think he could get through a modern door, he was fairly certain that handcuffs and cell doors were within his abilities.

He also had a pair of knives, one in his pocket, and one strapped to the vest that Cas had liberated from Crowley’s guard.

Sam eyed the surveillance camera as he crept up the rough granite steps leading to the entryway. Cautiously, he pulled on the worn wood handle of the door, almost letting out a sigh of relief when it pulled open easily. He released it, letting it swing shut. He pulled twice more, only a few inches each time, before finally drawing it open wide enough to slip through. With any luck, it would appear to the cameras as though the motion was due to an errant gust of wind.

The lobby was done up in a rustic theme, all rough wood and antlers. A fire crackled in the granite fireplace, but the wide reception counter was abandoned. Above him, Sam could see a darkened second floor, chairs and tables, probably a restaurant of some kind.

Open hallways lead off to either side of the open area, and he went left, choosing at random. He walked lightly, trying not to disturb anything as he went. He didn’t know the layout but if he had to guess, he’d say he needed to head down. Basements were where things happened, in places like this.

It took ten of his thirty minutes to scout the full left wing. Nothing but conference halls and private rooms. Sam moved past them silently, not wanting to disturb the sleeping occupants. He was used to navigating hallways in bare feet, his boots made it difficult to move quietly.

When he was certain he’d searched the whole left wing, he went back to the abandoned lobby. He crouched behind the reception desk, working the laces of his boots open.

 _Not a good idea,_ he heard Dean say. The hunter’s voice was clear as a bell in his head.

 _The place is designed for slave occupation, I’ll be fine,_ he answered back, pulling the heavy shoes off and stuffing them into a corner of the desk.

_If you need to run for it-_

_I’m not going to get that far if I wake somebody up,_ Sam interrupted, rising to his feet.

He moved silently into the right wing, immediately coming across a kitchen. There were three slaves here, sluggishly beginning preparations on what would be breakfast in a few hours. They were dressed in simple slave tunics, and Sam didn’t miss the bruises on their upper arms. One of them had a black eye. Sam grimaced in sympathy.

 _I guess that means we have the right place,_ he reported back. The other two didn’t respond.

Beyond the kitchen were the rest of the facilities- laundry, housekeeping, and a recreation area for the slaves. It took Sam another five minutes to find the staircase to the lower level. It was behind a door, and there was no faking a burst of wind this time.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open.

There was no one behind it. No one had seen.

He slipped through the door and moved quickly down the stairs, bracing himself for what he would find. If this place was anything like Azazel’s, he was about to walk into an absolute carnival of misery.

The stairs ended in a set of warded fire doors, and for a moment, Sam feared they would be locked. He reached out, and the handle turned easily at his touch.

By the time he’d pushed it open, it was too late to run.

The door was yanked forward, out of his hold. Strong hands pulled at his clothes, yanking him forward into the room. Distantly, he heard the door at the top of the stairs slamming; others were coming, cutting off his retreat.

He went for the knife then, drawing the one from his vest and slashing out at the men holding him. He caught one of them across the forearm, drawing blood.

“Son of a _bitch!_ ” the man shouted, and then Sam tasted blood as the man brought his fist down, hard, against Sam’s cheek.

Someone kicked his knees out from under him and he went to his knees, dropping the knife. Another man caught it with his foot, sending it skittering across the marble floor.

Sam could feel the other two in his head, feel them watching as a boot caught him in the ribs, flipping him onto his back. Sam wrapped his arms around his head, trying to protect his face from the kicks. One of the men was laughing now. Sam breathed deep, sinking back away from his body. They’d do what they’d do. He couldn’t fight them all.

 _I’m so sorry, Sam,_ he heard Cas say, and he tried to reassure the angel that it was fine. They’d counted on this. Whoever these men were, they’d keep him alive until Azazel could get there and deal with him-

The blows suddenly stopped. The crowd surrounding him parted, silently making way for someone. Sam stared up at the newcomer in horror.

“Welcome back,” Azazel said, grinning down at his former slave. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... in which a large group of people does terrible things to Sam. 
> 
> A HazelDomain(tm) production, and all that that implies.

Sam stared up at him with barely concealed anger. Already, he was recalculating, trying to find a way to turn this back to his advantage.

“We were expecting the angel,” Azazel said. “After Crowley bit it, we figured it was only a matter of time before he showed up here.”

“Well you get me, you son of a bitch,” Sam snapped, pushing himself up onto his elbows. Someone kicked him, and he went back down with a groan. There was a low buzzing in his head that he assumed was Dean.

 _I’ve got this,_ he assured the hunter.

“Search him,” Azazel ordered. Two slaves stepped forward, grabbing Sam by the shoulders and yanking him up onto his knees. They stripped off the vest and patted the rest of him down, removing the picks and knife, as well as the burner phone he’d brought, anticipating this situation.

“I’m free. You can’t hold me and you know it,” Sam spat, staring defiantly up at Azazel. The man laughed, grabbing Sam’s wrist and yanking the sleeve of his shirt down to reveal his tattoo.

“You think this makes any difference to me?” Azazel hissed, leaning down into Sam’s face. “You don’t tell me what I _can’t_ do.” He dropped Sam’s wrist and grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands, yanking hard. Buttons flew in all directions, and someone whistled as the two slaves pulled the garment off.

Azazel crouched down, running his fingers over the tattoo on Sam’s chest.

“I remember putting a label here, last time I saw you. Marker. Apparently I should’ve used something more permanent.”

Sam closed his eyes as the men holding him yanked him to his feet. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by fighting this, not right now. He had to survive the first round, wait until they got tired. They’d put him away eventually, they always did. He just had to make it until then.

 _Hold on, Sam, we’re coming,_ Cas’s voice told him.

_Not yet. There’s too many for just the three of us._

Dean was protesting, too worked up for clear words. Sam took a deep breath, settling back into his training.

_It’ll be a few hours, now, Dean. Rest. Be ready when I call._

Dean’s frustration echoed back to him, but Castiel was there, doing his best to calm the hunter. Sam listened to them, focusing on them, letting his captors do what they wanted.

His hands were shackled together and drawn high above his head, forcing him up onto the balls of his feet. His back was against a pillar of some kind- it must have been built for this purpose. Sharp points encircled it at regular intervals, forcing Sam to arch his body away from the support. Almost immediately, the muscles of his back began to protest, but he ignored them. He could hold.

He listened to Castiel’s voice, the soothing cadence, telling him it would be fine.

Ever since the nightmares started, Cas had been watching over him at night. More than once, Sam had awakened to find himself encircled by strong arms and dark wings, Castiel murmuring to him in a language he didn’t understand-

Someone slapped him and he came back to the present with a start, the warmth of the angel’s chest replaced by the ache of overstretched muscles.

Azazel was pouring rubbing alcohol over what looked like a scalpel.

“Normally I’d get a doctor to do this,” Azazel was saying, “but we seem to have a shortage of those as of late. As I’m sure you know.”

Sam kept his mouth shut and his eyes forward. He remembered this. Azazel would want him quiet- he could do that.

His breath caught as the wet blade pierced the skin of his chest, just above his right nipple. Azazel stared at him, his mouth twisted up in sadistic glee as he continued his work.

Sam focused on keeping his breathing even, not letting even a hiss of pain escape his lips as he was sliced again and again. He didn’t need to look.

Damaged goods.

Hot blood dripped down his belly and he remembered the feel of Dean’s mouth, how the hunter had taken him to bed and kissed every inch of him. Like he was making a map. Like he was committing Sam’s body to memory.

‘I can’t lose you,’ he’d whispered into the darkness, and Sam had pulled him close and promised that he wouldn’t.

His chest burned like it was on fire, each carefully measured breath pulling at the incisions. Azazel was finished, standing back to admire his work. One of the other men stepped forward, lifting the bottle of rubbing alcohol and pouring a liberal splash over the wounds.

Sam’s vision turned red and white, every thought driven from his head by the pain of it, clawing through his body and mind. He realized he was hyperventilating and he hoped against hope that he hadn’t screamed.

“How quickly they forget,” one of the other men said, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

“Shouldn’t have let Roberts talk me out of taking his tongue,” Azazel responded.

Ah. So he _had_ screamed, then.

Sam silently berated himself as he watched a woman come closer. She held a small black case and with a sinking sensation, Sam realized that he recognized it.

She unzipped it quickly, revealing a set of shining needles in their sterile wrappers.

She looked up at him, her eyes dark.

“Seems you’ve forgotten what you are, slave,” she said in a high voice. Sam thought maybe this was the same woman from last time. “I’m just going to give you some reminders.”

The first one went through his septum, threaded through with a gold ring that he could feel resting just above his upper lip. The woman took pity on him, pushing the needle through the skin but not the cartilage. He sent her a silent thanks as he licked a drop of blood off his lip.

If she understood his gratitude she didn’t show it. Instead, she turned her attention to his chest, pinching his nipples until they stood in hard peaks.

Sam let his vision blur, his gaze still set straight forward. He didn’t want to look and he didn’t dare close his eyes. Someone moved to his side, rough hands moving over his skin. He didn’t think about that, either.

She did the left first and Sam stopped breathing. He held the air in, not daring to inhale, as she replaced the needle with another gold ring. He could feel his heartbeat, throbbing hot and heavy and painful with each second that passed.

She pushed the needle through his right nipple and he exhaled, hoping it was silent and dreading the alternative. Very carefully he inhaled, letting air back into his lungs, trying to ignore the pain hammering through his body.

The woman went back to her case and returned with a gold chain. She held it up for Sam to see, and raised a couple chuckles at his confusion.

The mystery was solved a moment later when she clipped the ends to the gold rings. Sam had only a moment to anticipate her intentions, and then she had hooked a finger through the chain and beckoned him closer.

She pulled with barely the strength of one finger, but the pain was enough to have Sam responding in a second, straining against his bonds to arch toward her. He couldn’t hold the position more than a few seconds, and they both knew it. She met him halfway, leaning in to capture his mouth in a kiss, biting him hard and then releasing him.

He slumped back, unable to take his full weight off his toes, the spikes of the column still jutting painfully into his spine.

The woman turned back to the crowd, raising her hands, drawing cheers as though she’d just performed a magic trick.

“Ready for the fun part?” she asked them, and there was a general roar of approval. Sam guessed there were probably twenty people here, maybe thirty. Not counting the handful of slaves that seemed to have been brought in as sideshow acts.

 _This is turning into quite a party,_ he thought dully.

 _I’m so sorry,_ he heard Castiel telling him, and he smiled at the sound of the angel’s voice. There were hands on him again, pulling his jeans down over his hips, stripping him naked. He’d expected this, too. It didn’t frighten him. He was used to being seen this way.

This wasn’t so different from what had happened two days ago, when he’d gotten out of the shower and found Castiel waiting for him. The angel had made love to him against the wall, holding Sam’s weight easily, Sam’s arms on his shoulders and legs wrapped around his hips. It wasn’t until they’d finished that they realized Dean was in the doorway, a smug grin on his lips.

“Huh,” the woman said. She was crouched down in front of Sam, absently fingering the barbell in his cock. “I would have bet money he’d have taken this out by now.”

Sam bit back a grin, happy to have ruined it for them, if only this little bit.

The woman looked back to Azazel.

“What do you want me to do? It’s already here, I can put in a wand…”

Azazel strode forward, grabbing a fistful of Sam’s hair and forcing his face up.

“You think that’s _funny_?” he snapped, and Sam let his face go blank, not wanting to antagonize him further. Azazel searched his expression with a sneer. “Still think you’re free, slave?”

He caught the chain between two fingers, forcing Sam to lean closer. Sam was silent, but he knew Azazel could see the pain on his face. Azazel chuckled.

“Still want to tell me I _can’t_?”

Sam shook his head slightly, knowing that was the reaction Azazel wanted. The older man laughed, releasing the chain.

“I’m gonna pass you around like a fucking party favor,” he growled into Sam’s ear. “By the time I kill you, you’ll forget you were _ever_ free.”

Sam’s burst of relief was swallowed up in the pain of the needle penetrating him again, lengthwise this time. He bit his tongue trying not to scream, the familiar taste of blood filling his mouth. He didn’t look down, didn’t want to see whatever it was that she was doing now.

Azazel turned back to the crowd.

“Who wants first go?”

 _Last chance to put the wall back up,_ he thought as his wrists were released and he was forced to his knees. _There’s no unseeing this._

Dean’s response was instantaneous.

_No. I’m not leaving you alone._

Black silk dropped over Sam’s eyes, tightening until there wasn’t a scrap of light shining through. He told his body to be calm, pliant. Strong hands gripped his jaw, forcing his mouth open.

They used a ring gag on him, which he thought was a little insulting. He knew how to keep from using his teeth.

Someone pulled at the chain and he lurched forward, almost losing his balance. Someone else caught him by the hair, thrusting deep into his mouth as they did. With the ring in place he was limited in what he could do, so he focused on breathing. Slow and steady, in and out. This was familiar territory.

The man wasn’t gentle with him, the head of his cock driving into Sam’s throat, and Sam had to focus to keep from gagging on it. There were hands on his hips now, yanking back, pulling him up-

“Bring him over here,” someone said, and he was dragged to his feet.

 _I’m sorry,_ he sent through the bond.

 _For what?!?_ came Dean’s instant response.

They pushed him down over a table, thankfully letting him lie on his back rather than his front. Someone grabbed his shoulders, tugging until his head hung over the edge of the table. Even without the gag, Sam knew this was when he’d need his mouth open.

 _That you have to see this,_ Sam answered.

Hands pulled his legs apart and he forced his body to relax. He wasn’t naïve enough to think they were going to prep him for this.

Someone pushed into his mouth, just as big, just as deep. It cut off his air, muffling his cry as someone else buried themselves between his legs.

_Sam, no…_

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The man was wearing a condom and that, at least, was lubricated. Sam didn’t think this rated in the top ten. Not yet, anyway.

 _At least I don’t have to look at them,_ Sam joked.

If the others responded he missed it. Someone had taken hold of the chain, lifting it ever so gently upwards. Sam arched helplessly, trying to relieve the pressure. People held his arms down, limiting his motion, and the man between his legs groaned in pleasure as he squirmed. Sam wondered if it was Azazel.

_I’m going to kill them, Sam. If nothing else gets you through this-_

_Hush, Dean._

Castiel’s voice broke through Dean’s threat. Sam was grateful. He didn’t need to be angry right now. He was nothing right now. He was a hole, a void. He was pliable, he was formless. He was water, he was stone, he felt nothing.

He couldn’t breathe.

His body hurt so much, but he was not his body, he was stronger than that, and he always had been.

His body twisted, trying to breathe.

He remembered home. He remembered holding Dean in his arms, remembered watching Castiel’s face as the angel kissed him.

They’d take care of each other, Sam knew.

_Sam?_

They’d be fine.

_SAM!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I used to hurt Cas. Somewhere along the line my brain switched paths and now I'm a Sam-whumper. Sorry Amelia.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get worse for Sam. Dean doesn't take it well.

“What’s happening? Dean, talk to me!”

Charlie wasn’t sure whether she should shake him or just get out of his way. Dean’s brow was furrowed and his palms were pressed to his eyes.

“He’s gone, I can’t feel him at all- Cas! We need a door!”

“He’s not gone, he’s unconscious,” the angel said calmly. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass, his wings wrapped around him. “I can still feel him.”

“Are you sure?”

Castiel turned his face to Dean, raising an eyebrow in a particularly human expression.

“I’m sure.”

“We need to go get him,” Dean declared. He grabbed the chalk they’d used to make the concealment spell, and pressed it into Cas’s hand. “We need a door.”

“He’s waking up,” Cas responded. He made no attempt to take the chalk.

Dean’s eyes widened, and he pressed his palms to his face again, groaning.

“We should never have sent him in there, I’m never going to forgive myself.”

“What are they doing?” Victor asked hesitantly.

“You don’t want to know,” Dean muttered. Cas shot him a sharp glance.

“They’re doing exactly what Sam predicted they’d do,” he said, still looking at Dean. “Working through a fairly standard set of sexual sadomasochistic rituals. For all their power, they aren’t particularly creative.”

Charlie and Victor exchanged glances. Castiel closed his eyes again. His hands rested on his knees and as they watched, his fingers tightened on the denim.

“None of this is new to him, Dean,” the angel said quietly. “Your distress isn’t helping.”

“No, that’s bullshit. We need to get him out of there and if you won’t get me inside, I’ll go myself.”

“Dean, wait-” Victor started, but he could have saved his breath. Dean froze, pressing his hands to his eyes.

“Fuck,” Dean murmured. Whatever they were seeing, even Castiel seemed perturbed. Dean picked the chalk back up, pressing it into Cas’s hand and forcing his fingers closed around it.

“You don’t have to activate it,” Dean said quietly, “but at least have it ready.”

Cas looked up, meeting his eyes.

“What did you see?” Charlie asked.

“They’re going to brand him,” Dean said, his voice getting higher as he talked.

Cas shifted onto his knees and began to draw.  

 

 

_Don’t._

Sam wasn’t sure if he was talking to Cas or Azazel. He didn’t know how long it had been since he got here. He was still gagged, but he could breathe. His mouth tasted salty and bitter, which meant it was at least partway over. His chest was bathed in fire and he felt like someone had punched him in the gut.

Maybe they had.

He wasn’t thinking about that.

_We’re going to get you out of there, Sam, hold tight-_

_No!_

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out what Azazel had been showing him.

_Don’t come anywhere near this, I don’t want you anywhere near this-_

The stylized ‘A’ was beginning to glow red, and Azazel examined it with glee as it began to smoke.

“I got it for the angel, of course. Figured if I was gonna have to mark him up, might as well do it in style.” He twisted the brand around in his fingers, watching it turn. He cut his eyes back to Sam. “There’s a J, too.”

_This is going to knock me out, I think._

 

“Jesus Christ, Cas, _open the door!_ ”

“Not until he asks.”

“He won’t ask, Cas, it’s _Sam_ we’re talking about-”

“Then you should know he knows his limits.”

Dean closed his eyes, listening to Sam.

He couldn’t see everything Sam saw, only what Sam was focused on. The glowing A, turning slowly in the dark. He could feel Sam’s fear, and the pain, but distantly. Like a memory.

“He doesn’t _have_ limits.”

“You aren’t hearing me.”

Castiel stood, leaving the chalk markings. Dean had begun pacing.

“This isn’t _sex,_ Cas, this is torture, I didn’t send him in there to be _tortured-”_

“You didn’t send him in at all. He went on his own.”

“But I’m responsible for him, he’s mine-”

Cas was in front of him in three steps, taking his shoulders and pushing him back against the car.

“Look at me, Dean. Listen to my words. _Sam walked through that door knowing what would happen to him._ ”

Dean gaped.

“But- he said sex. He said they’d-”

Cas’s eyes were soft as he leaned in, pressing a chaste kiss to Dean’s mouth.

“Because he knew, if he told you the truth, you’d protect him.”

 

 

“Two strikes,” Azazel told the other man, handing the brand over.

Of course the bastard wasn’t going to do his own dirty work, Sam thought bitterly. He shifted minutely, just to reassure himself that he couldn’t.

The tabletop felt rough against his torn skin, and the piercings were points of fire where he was forced to rest his weight on them. His hands were bound behind his back now, wrist to elbow. Easier to hold him still, he assumed.

Azazel approached him, stepping out of Sam’s vision as he trailed a hand down his captive’s back. He paused at the curve of Sam’s ass, then drew back and slapped him hard, across the top of his right cheek.

“Right there,” Azazel said smugly. “Right on that red mark.”

The man with the brand nodded, disappearing from Sam’s vision.

Strong hands held his hips and thighs, immobilizing him. Someone put their hand over his mouth and Sam was grateful. He didn’t think he could be quiet for this.

 _Last thing,_ he thought desperately. _Last thing. They always save the worst for last._

He was beginning to hyperventilate. He imagined he could feel the heat of the brand as the man positioned it over his skin.

_Last thing-_

The brand pressed into his flesh and he screamed, bucking up against the people who held him. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop, the tortured cries escaping his throat, seemingly without end.

The man was pressing down, hard, and he was counting, though Sam didn’t know what to.

Infinity, maybe.

_Dean-_

The brand lifted off his skin with a wet hiss, and Sam let out a sob. He wanted to thrash but he didn’t dare move. Moving would make it worse.

“Perfect,” he heard Azazel say. “Now do the other one.”

 

 

“He’s out,” Castiel said quietly. He’d returned to drawing his chalk doorway. Charlie was crouched beside him, watching him form the sigils with interest.

Victor was sitting in his car, thumbing his radio and watching the sunrise.

Dean sat on the blacktop beside his car. He’d been there since the first brand touched. His arms were folded over his knees, his forehead resting on his forearms.

Charlie glanced at Cas.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s not used to being helpless. This is new to him.”

“I can hear you,” Dean called, not lifting his head.

“And I, you,” Cas agreed, nodding. He put the last of the sigils on the doorway and dropped the chalk. “It’s ready. It’s linked to Sam, so when he wakes up, we’ll be able to get to where he is.”

Dean turned his head toward the angel.

“Assuming that he’s moved and they aren’t just buzzing him back up for more of the same.”

Castiel shook his head.

“No, Sam’s experiences are the same as mine. They’ve been at it for several hours. By now they’re beginning to get bored and their victim is beginning to weaken. The branding is the grand finale before they move onto something else. He’ll have a few hours to recover and be fresh for the next session.” Cas paused. “Relatively speaking.”

Dean put his head back on his arms, and groaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost to the end now, guys.


	48. Chapter 48

Sam did not want to wake up. It was dark where he was, and cool. Someone was singing to him.

He was being carried. Two people. An arm over each of them.

His feet dragged along the ground. He didn’t bother to try catching his balance. He wasn’t sure he could stand, let alone walk.

The person on his left stumbled, pulling him off balance, and he hissed in pain as the scabs across his chest tore open.

“God, I’m sorry,” the person exclaimed. A woman. Early forties maybe. In a minute, Sam would open his eyes to look at her.

A minute.

“Who’d you piss off, kid?” the other person asked him. This was a guy. Older guy.

“’Zazel,” Sam muttered. A drop of blood ran down his chest. He was having trouble forming words.

“Sounds about right,” the guy answered. “Don’t die on us, kid. I don’t wanna end up in your place.”

Sam opened his eyes, content to watch the floor passing by. It was no longer flagstones or marble- this was linoleum, the cheap pebbled stuff you could clean with a hose, which meant-

_I made it._

“We gotta go,” he muttered, pulling ineffectively at his captors. “We have to go.”

“Dunno how to tell you this, but you’re not going anywhere,” the woman told him. She and the man were both dressed in plain cotton shorts. No tattoo, which meant they weren’t trained. And they had keyrings, which meant overseers.

Sam let out a sigh of relief.

They came to a row of cells- most of them were unlocked or empty. No one looked at them as they passed.

“How long you been a slave?”

Sam groaned.

“Eleven years.”

“No wonder you ran,” the woman mused. They stopped in front of an empty cell, and the man reached for a keyring. Sam’s hand shot out, catching his wrist.

“There are monsters here, aren’t there?” Sam asked. His mind was clearing now, and he looked up into the man’s dark brown eyes. “I mean real monsters. Creacon stuff.”

The woman frowned.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because, I was at the other estate. It was raided- the cops, looking for slave abuses. They killed _everyone._ ”

“The cops?”

“The owners. You can’t talk if you’re dead.”

The woman’s grip tightened on his arm.

“Bullshit. You’re a liar.”

“Bet your life on it?” Sam asked. His voice was gravel in his throat. He needed a drink.

The two slaves exchanged glances.

“I think it’s more likely you’re looking for another chance to run,” the man said. Sam shook his head, the blood pounding through his brain as he did. He was so goddamn tired.

“Leave me here. Lock me in if you want. But take the others. As many as you can. Go north. The police will be waiting for you at the road.”

The slaves exchanged another look.

“Are you sure?” the woman asked quietly. “If we go, and we’re caught-”

“Believe me, I know,” Sam interrupted. “But if you stay, they’ll kill you. All of you.”

The woman bit her lip, considering. The man shook his head, turning the key in the lock and dragging Sam inside.

“We’re not running. If it doesn’t work and they catch us, we’ll end up worse than you.”  

Sam lowered himself gingerly down onto the cot. The letters on his right side pounded with each beat of his heart. He could feel the other two watching. Listening.

If he couldn’t do this, it was all for nothing.

He couldn’t think.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please, can I have some water?”

The man nodded.

“You’ll need some bandages, too. Not that they won’t be getting torn off in a few hours.”

He and the woman exchanged another glance. The man left, leaving Sam alone with the woman.

“Is there…” he paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “I came looking for a gate. A doorway. To a different place.”

Her eyes widened a little at that, but she said nothing. Sam pressed on.

“Please, it’s important. My friend- his life depends on me finding this thing. Anything you know. Please.”

“How do you know about that?” she hissed. “Nobody talks about that.”

“My friend came through it. He told me. Please, where is it?”

The man reappeared at the door, holding a cup of water.

“The angel,” he said. “You saw it?”

“He sent me here,” Sam responded, reaching for the cup. It was soft silicone- unbreakable. Sam wondered if that was a precaution or a reaction to something a slave had done. The water was cool and tasteless- he half-expected the sour tang of the relaxants Azazel had used in the past. “Thank you.”

“We don’t go near it,” the woman said. Her voice had dropped to a low whisper. “They tried to put people through. To see what was on the other side. It was awful. I’ve never heard screams like that.”

Sam eyed her silently. She had the scars and bruises he was beginning to expect on the slaves here. He didn’t doubt she’d seen a lot of pain in her life.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ellen. That’s Bobby.”

“Ellen. I’m Sam. I’m a free man, and I came to warn you. The masters are going to kill you, unless you run. Soon.”

“Bullshit,” the man muttered. “Prove it. Prove any of it.”

He turned to leave, catching Ellen by the arm as he did.

“Come on.”

Sam closed his eyes, leaning his head back. The sound of the cell door locking echoed loud in his ears. He wanted to lay down, but it hurt to move. He settled for leaning his shoulders back against the painted cinderblock wall.

He could feel tears gathering in his eyes.

_I couldn’t do it._

Cas’s reply was instantaneous.

_We have time yet, Sam._

Dean was silent, but Sam could feel the anger there, the frustration.

_Dean-_

_You lied to me._

Sam rolled his shoulders back, feeling the scabs pull, letting Dean’s words sink in. Damaged goods.

_I had to. You couldn’t know._

_You know I never would have agreed to this if you had been honest with me-_

_I asked you not to look._

The tears spilled from Sam’s eyes now, running down his bruised cheeks.

_This is what I’m good for, Dean. This is my part to play. It always has been. I asked you not to look. I told you that you’d hate what you saw._

_Sam, I-_

“Hey, you alive in there?”

Sam’s eyes flew open, and he stared toward the door of the cell.

There was a young man standing there. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, and Sam’s heart broke to see him. The bruises on his bare hips indicated pretty clearly what kind of slave he was.

“Still breathing,” Sam rasped. The water cup was empty.

“Were you telling the truth? About the cops waiting for us?”

“Yeah.”

The boy bit his lip, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes.

“There’s some messed up shit that happens here,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“A lot of ‘em here, they don’t know but-” the boy looked up. “I’ve only been here a few weeks. I was a house slave, before. And I heard, from my owners… there actually have been raids. In other places.”

“There were other places like this,” Sam said. “You have to know the things that happen here are illegal.”

The boy laughed.

“I know that. I just didn’t think anyone cared.”

Sam struggled up into a sitting position.

“People care. And they’re coming. Trust me.”

The boy eyed him warily.

“Can you give me something? Anything, I can show the others? They’ll be too scared to run, not without some evidence.”

Sam frowned.

“Can you give me half an hour? I need to come up with something. Talk to the others. Tell them to get ready.”

The boy nodded, and disappeared from the cell door.

Sam groaned and leaned back against the wall.

He could deal with Dean’s rejection later.

_We have half an hour .Half an hour to prove there are people on the outside. What do we do?_

Charlie popped the trunk of her car, rummaging around until she found the box of books she was looking for.

“Are those… foam swords?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s called LARPing, and it’s cool,” Charlie said distractedly, flipping through the book on the top. Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. She picked up another book, slapping it against Dean’s chest.

“Look through this. We need something obvious and nondestructive.”

“Why nondestructive?” Castiel asked, coming to stand over Dean’s shoulder.

“Because if we blow a wall out, we could hurt somebody,” Charlie answered.

“Not to mention, it would give the hellfire boys a heads-up that we’re coming,” Victor added. “The more of an element of surprise we have, the better.

Castiel looked unimpressed, but he accepted the book Charlie handed him.

“We could summon up a storm or something,” Victor suggested, looking at the sky. Charlie shook her head.

“No, this needs to be obvious. And it needs to be obvious even in the basement.”

Dean frowned.

“What about a spirit? An elemental, something ethereal we could send down to deliver a message?”

“The warding on the doors would prevent them from entering,” Cas said. “That’s why they were able to see Sam once he reached the bottom.”

“Oh,” Dean said suddenly, slamming the book shut. “Oh, I’m an idiot. How much time do we have left?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Dean glanced at his watch.

“That should be plenty of time. Stay here. I’ll be back.”  

 

 

Sam’s jaw tightened as fingers brushed over the brand.

“Sorry,” Ellen murmured. “But if this gets infected, it’ll probably kill you.”

“If I live that long,” Sam answered.

Ellen didn’t respond, just kept applying the antibiotic cream. A bandage was waiting by her side. Sam hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at the brand, but the bandage was six inches to a side. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at that.

_Azazel Jabel._

_Never mind that, Sam,_ Castiel told him. _Just a little longer. Fifteen minutes until this all starts. Be ready._

 _As ready as I can be,_ Sam thought.

People kept wandering past the door to his cell, glancing at him as they passed. Sam didn’t know if news was spreading, or if they just wanted a look at the hellfire’s newest punching bag.

Ellen handed him the cream.

“I assume you can do the piercings?”

“Yeah.”

Sam picked up the washcloth she’d brought, and tried to dab the worst of the blood off his face. Very gently, he felt the area around the gold hoop, trying not to disturb it. Every gentle touch sent waves of pain shooting through his head.

He abandoned the exploration in favor of a hasty application of the ointment.

He was equally perfunctory about the new barbell through the head of his cock. He brushed the cream on quickly, then pulled on the shorts Ellen had brought him.

More of the slaves walking past were dressed now, too. Sam hoped that was a good sign.

“Do you think they’ll go?” he asked quietly.

“Can you show them they’ll be safe?” Ellen responded. She was wrapping Sam’s chest in a long bandage, and she didn’t look at him when she spoke. “We all know, this isn’t the worst of what the owners can do to us. Many of them would prefer to stay with the devil they know.”

_Cas? Dean? Anything?_

_Yeah, I’ve got you covered,_ Dean answered. He didn’t elaborate. Sam didn’t push.

“They’ll be safe,” Sam promised. “Will you help them? If you run? I saw some of them were locked in.”

“The flight risks,” Ellen agreed. “I’ll do what I can.”

The boy from before was back again. He looked to Sam with wide eyes.

“Got anything for us, Stretch?”

Sam blinked.

_Dean?_

 

 

_Working on it._

Dean moved through the woods as quietly as he could. The lodge was supplied by a single access road, and that’s what he was following. The roadside was muddy, the trees crowding in on the narrow lane, but he didn’t dare move to the center. He kept his eyes on the sky, when they weren’t watching his feet.

It couldn’t be far now.

 

 

“Everybody back to your damn bunks,” Bobby growled, coming down the hallway. Some of the slaves listened- most didn’t. They were gathering by Sam’s cell, waiting, silently.

Like a flock of starlings, Sam thought. Waiting for the signal to fly.

“He’s a fucking liar,” someone hissed.

“He said they’re going to kill us.”

“Pam, I know for a fact you’re supposed to be up in the ballroom,” Bobby snapped. “Move it, or I’ll strap you myself.”

“Word is spreading,” Ellen mumbled. She stood, moving to the door of Sam’s cell. She unlocked it without looking at him.

“Head north,” Sam said.

“That’s it,” Bobby growled. “One more word outta you, and I’m gonna-”

Sam never found out what Bobby would do, because at that second, the lights went out.

 


	49. Chapter 49

Dean holstered his gun, staring up at the blown transformer. He’d put an iron round through it, and the bullet had apparently lodged inside, because it was now beginning to smoke.

He turned and headed back the way he’d come.

 

 

_Please tell me that was you?_

_Depends, did all the lights just go out?_

Castiel listened to the two of them going back and forth, excited at their victory, apprehensive about what was to come.

He turned to Victor.

“Things are beginning to move, now. Can you take this from here?”

“The police will be waiting on the road, just like he promised,” Victor said, keying his radio again. “Not to mention a few dozen free members of the BSU slave autonomy movement. And their livestreams, of course. Just to make sure nothing goes awry.”

These words meant nothing to Castiel, but he relayed the information anyway. Whatever it meant, it pleased the two humans.

“Dean says that if he were here, he would kiss you,” he relayed to the detective. Victor wrinkled his nose.

“You tell him to keep his mind-melded ass away from me.”

 _We might also be getting some visits from the electric company,_ Dean added.

 _Hurry back,_ Cas told him. _The door is ready when you arrive._

_Got it. Sam, you somewhere inconspicuous?_

_… you could say that._

The blackness had lasted only a few seconds before the emergency generator kicked in with a bang. Emergency lights lit up the hallway, casting a dull gloom over the assembled slaves.

“That’s them,” Sam said, breaking the silence.

“Good enough for me,” the boy muttered, turning and disappearing through the crowd.

“North,” Sam said again, looking at Ellen. She looked to the dissipating crowd and then back at Sam.

“The thing you were talking about, the gate,” she said finally. “It’s here. Down this way. You take a left, the second right, and then right again. There’s a metal door, covered in wards. You can’t miss it.”

“I’m sure I can try,” Sam answered back. Ellen didn’t smile. She looked to Bobby, instead.

“You coming?”

“Hell no. I’m going back to my damn bunk, before shit _really_ starts going south.”

“Hide under the mattress,” Sam suggested, rising shakily to his feet. Vertigo hit him and for a second he thought he’d fall, but he didn’t. Instead he straightened, taking slow steps toward the door and the two overseers waiting there.

“Left, second right, right,” he said. Ellen nodded.

“It’s locked. I don’t have the key.”

“I’ll manage.” He looked her in the eye, giving her a nod. “Go with the others. And thank you.”

 

 

Dean thrashed through the underbrush, running as best he could through the bracken. Distantly, he could hear some kind of alarm going off. Whatever element of surprise they had, it was gone now.  

 

 

“That’s out of our jurisdiction,” the woman on the other end of the line explained. Victor frowned.

“Trust me, this is gonna be _everyone’s_ jurisdiction today. You got medics? We’re looking at probably a hundred and fifty cases of severe slave mistreatment, before we’re done.”

The line was quiet for a moment.

“Sorry, _how_ many?”

 

 

Carolyn waited at the front desk, watching the glass doors. The lights didn’t come back on, and she wasn’t sure what to do. She glanced nervously at the other slave, a strong young man on duty as a bellboy. She hadn’t done anything, it was stupid to worry she’d done something wrong, but after last time-

Her fingers darted to the scar on her shoulder, but she forced her hand back to her lap.

The back door swung open and she flinched, but it wasn’t one of the owners. It was a slave-

Two slaves-

“What are you guys doing up here?” the bellboy asked. “You know we aren’t supposed to be topside unless we’re on duty.”

More slaves were coming through the doors now, some stopping, most not.

“We’ve gotta go,” one of them said, hurrying past. “There’s going to be a raid.”

“I’m supposed to stay,” Carolyn said quietly, her eyes darting to the door. “I’m supposed to stay here.”

“Suit yourself,” the other said, shrugging, and then he was gone.

Carolyn huddled behind the desk, waiting for directions.

A moment later, the alarms started.

 

 

Water poured from the ceiling, cold and stagnant, drenching Sam instantly. The hallway filled with flashing red lights, and a blaring siren cut into his head.

He squeezed his hands over his ears and pressed on, ignoring it.

Someone had pulled a fire alarm, maybe to cover the exodus, maybe just to cause trouble.

The bandages he wore were quickly soaked through, but he ignored them, pressing on.

Left, second right, right.

 

 

“Made it!”

Dean stumbled out of the woods, a little worse for wear. Charlie and Cas were bent over the chalk doorway, reinforcing some of the sigils. Victor was already gone, off to help coordinate the forces that were arriving on the main road.

Castiel looked to Dean.

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

_Sam, you ready for us?_

_As I’ll ever be._

Castiel pressed his palms to the blacktop and felt his energy pulse through the runes written there.

They did not pass through the middle ground, the nowhere-place. Instead, one moment they were in the parking lot, and the next moment they were in a darkened basement, getting rained on.

“ _Christ_ that’s cold!” Dean shouted, shaking the water out of his eyes. “A little warning next time?”

“Sorry,” Sam muttered. He was leaning against the wall, soaked to the bone. Dean could see blood soaking through the cotton bandages, and even from five feet away, he could see the man was shivering.

“C’mon. C’mere, put your weight on me.”

Dean helped Sam get an arm over his shoulders, hoisting him up. Sam’s skin was cold to the touch, and Dean began to worry seriously about blood loss.

“Cas, can you fix hi-”

Dean turned slowly, trying not to jostle Sam too much.

“Cas?”

 

 

Castiel stared at the gate. It was like staring at the sun through a pinhole, but even still, he could feel the warmth and the power echoing through. He spread his wings in the empty room, letting them catch the light like solar panels.

He could hear his brothers and sisters, just beyond the veil.

Home.

Dean’s voice cut through the gathered voices.

_Cas?_

_I found it. Dean, get Sam to safety, I need to do this alone._

_Cas, he’s hurt bad, I’m not sure he’s gonna make it out of here._

Castiel paused, focusing on Sam. He was in bad shape, but-

_He’ll live._

_How do you know? Where are you?_

_I went straight to the gate. I sent you to Sam, help him._

Cas withdrew a small blade, using it to nick the tips of his middle and ring fingers. He dropped to the floor, drawing hastily on the smooth marble surface.

The floor was wet, washing the blood away as he wrote, but it didn’t matter. Blood magic was rooted in life, and life could not be washed away.

 

 

 

“He’s not coming. We’ve gotta go,” Sam muttered, and Dean was forced to concede the point.

“Do you know how to get out?”

“Head back this way. There’s stairs.”

The progress was slow. Sam was losing energy with each passing step.

They passed rows of empty cells, dozens of them. Maybe one in twenty had a slave inside- not locked, not bound, just… waiting. The slaves looked at them with wide eyes as they passed. Dean didn’t make eye contact. He kept his gaze straight ahead, focused on getting Sam to safety.

“It’s warded down here,” he told Sam. He wasn’t sure if the other man could even hear him. “Once we get outside the warding, Charlie can get us the hell out of here. Okay? Just to the stairs. We just have to make it that far.”

Sam didn’t respond.

_You there?_

_Yeah. I’m good. Keep going._

“ _There_ you are,” someone said from behind them.

 

 

Castiel’s head snapped up. He’d heard something.

He scanned the edges of the room- all marble pillars and heavy velvet curtains.

The fire alarms were still blaring, making it difficult to locate the sound he’d heard.

Nothing moved.

 

 

“Have you found the gate yet?” Azazel asked conversationally. Dean didn’t answer, just continued backing slowly down the hallway. Beside him, Sam was frozen. Azazel kept walking toward them.

“I’m guessing not,” he continued. “Or you’d have found my little surprise.”

His eyes flashed, and his grin had too many teeth.

 

 

Castiel forced himself to be still, to focus on the room around him. The air currents, the water, the sounds beneath the alarm-

There it was.

 

 

Dean reached for his gun but Azazel drew first.

“Where’s my angel?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Dean answered.

Azazel shot him.

 

 

The thing launched itself out of the darkness, or maybe the darkness was the thing launching- Castiel couldn’t tell. The thing seemed to destroy light, and at the same time, it was decidedly _sharp._

It barreled toward him with a howl and he dodged, reaching out and striking it as it passed.

The strike burned it, Castiel’s power flowing through his hands and singing it’s skin.

It screamed again, ricocheting off a far wall and pounding back toward him.

 

 

Sam’s ears rang with the echo of the gunshot.

In his mind, he could see Cas fighting off some monstrosity.

He could see Azazel smiling at him, a crazy, broken smile.

Dean’s support was gone. Sam couldn’t lean on him.

He stumbled to catch his balance as Dean went down, slow as molasses, blood already blooming red across the belly of his shirt.

“You two have been _such_ a pain in my ass,” Azazel said.

 

 

Castiel shoved the thing off him, scrambling onto his belly and pawing at the ground, trying to finish the sigils. Two more runes and the gate would shut.

The thing landed on him, hard, jaws closing on his wing with a sickening crunch.

Castiel screamed in pain, almost immediately writing the wing off. Pain jarred through his body as the thing gnawed at him.

Sam’s voice exploded through his mind, a picture of Dean, the crimson stain as bright as the sun. Cas’s heart dropped as he searched for Dean’s mind in the chaos-

 

 

“Leave him,” Azazel ordered, gesturing for Sam to come closer. “The vampires will finish him off soon enough.”

An inch of water covered the floor, all of it turning red with Dean’s blood. Sam stared blankly, his thoughts frozen.

Then he dropped to his knees with a splash, pressing his hands against the wound, trying to staunch the flow. Blood flooded over his hands.

“ _Cas! Help me!”_

The ground was cold beneath Ellen’s feet. She didn’t have shoes- none of them did.

When she was a little girl, she’d read a book about rabbits on a journey. This is what they must have looked like, she thought, looking to the people around her. Quiet, frightened things, moving forward in fits and bursts.

The woman next to her tripped, and Ellen caught her elbow, stopping her fall.

The woman gave her a smile.

Up ahead, red and blue lights began flashing through the trees.

 

 

Cas rolled hard, feeling his wing tearing as he wrenched it from the monster’s grip. He reached out, plunging his hands into the darkness, screaming in pain and anger as he shoved his power through the thing. It writhed and twisted, clawing at him, drawing deep gouges down his face and chest.

Somewhere in the distance, Sam was screaming his name.

Dean was dying.

The creature collapsed on top of him, hot and wet and heavy and stinking like the pits of hell. Castiel shoved it off, not bothering to check for life. It wasn’t dead.

He scribbled the last few lines of the runes, feeling the power thrumming through his body. The gate’s hold on this realm was faltering- it stood taut, like a mousetrap, ready to snap shut at any second.

Over the sounds of the alarms, Castiel could hear singing.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, apparently when emergency generators kick on, the emergency lights are *not* red. Husband informed me of this fact, this morning, while I was running this past him. 
> 
> In my head, the emergency lights are red. 
> 
> The MOL bunker has red emergency lights, the hellfire club can have red panic lights in their evil secret hangout if they want. 
> 
>  
> 
> That having been said: thank you to everyone who has pointed out typos, things they didn't understand, other stories cobbing my stuff *cough* or just, whatever in general. I'm still planning to do a massive rewrite on all this, so you're all contributing to a much higher quality final product. 
> 
>  
> 
> In other news, I'm going to get my first ultrasound tomorrow so hopefully that'll put me in a good mood and I will be able to finish this story this weekend.  
> We shall see.


	50. Chapter 50

Dean’s blood was hot on his hands, and until he felt it, Sam hadn’t realized how cold he’d been. He could hear Azazel coming toward him, sloshing through the bloody water. His fists tightened on Dean’s clothes.

Off in the distance there was a roar, followed by a scream.

“You let them out,” Sam realized, looking to Azazel in horror.

“Our little menagerie. They’re covering my getaway,” Azazel agreed. He raised the gun, leveling it with Sam’s eyes.

Sam didn’t blink.

Azazel pulled the trigger.

 

 

The creature rose to it’s full height, growling at the angel.

Cas growled back.

They circled each other, Cas edging ever closer to the gate. He could feel Sam’s fear, Dean’s ebbing life force, but they seemed weak and far away.

The sounds of home flooded through the gateway like a river.

 

 

The barrel clicked impotently, and Sam lunged. He was younger, and larger, but Azazel was fresh. Sam tackled him backwards into the water, his hands closing around Azazel’s throat.

Azazel reached up and squeezed, digging his fingers into the fresh brand. Sam flinched back, his grip momentarily lost. Azazel didn’t hesitate, just followed Sam up, landing a fist hard into the side of his face. Sam cried out, falling backwards.

Azazel grinned.

 

 

Carolyn watched the glass doors.

She’d stayed at her post, even when the alarms had gone out and the water had started to fall.

Now she sat on the chair, her knees pulled to her chest, and watched the men advancing up the front steps. They were dressed in black. One of them had a dog, a big mean looking thing.

They pushed through the doors with guns drawn, fanning in all directions.

“Welcome to Greater Banks lodge,” she said through chattering teeth. “How can I help you?”

Someone approached her, and she did her best to smile. It was important to always smile for the guests.

She didn’t like the look of the dog.

“I’d like you to come outside now, ma’am,” the man in black said to her. She nodded.

She could go outside.

 

 

Sam went down hard, Azazel coming down on top of him.

His vision was getting dark at the edges. He thought he was bleeding again, but that might have been Dean’s blood.

There were bruises spreading across his belly, dark things he didn’t like the look of at all.

He brought a knee up into Azazel’s groin and the other man screamed. Sam took advantage of the distraction to scramble backwards, back towards Dean.

He couldn’t feel Dean in his mind any more. He scrabbled at the bond, but Dean was gone.

_Cas! Cas, please!_

The angel didn’t respond. When Sam reached for him, all he saw was light and darkness. And the sound of singing.

Sam reached Dean’s body and didn’t hesitate, just began searching through the hunter’s pockets for the weapon he knew was there.

The gun was soaked, but there was a knife on his belt. Sam’s fingers trembled as he struggled to unfold the blade- he couldn’t focus his eyes.

Behind him, Azazel stood with a growl.

 

 

Fifteen years on the force and Chris Phillips had never seen anything like this.

The first floor was bad enough. His team had come through the front doors just in time to meet the soaked patrons of the lodge coming out. Most of them had slaves in tow- beaten, starved things that had made Chris sick to his stomach.

There was a triage post set up on the front lawn, separating the slaves from their well-to-do owners, trying to figure out what the hell had been going on in this place.

They’d found the stairs to the basement just as they burst open, a rush of people in eveningwear rushing up at them. Chris didn’t bother to ask why they were dressed for a gala event- he was more interested in getting them up and out of the building without crushing each other in their panic.

He was also interested in the variety of bite marks he was seeing on the panicked group. He caught a woman by the arm, gesturing to the bleeding wound. She just shook her head.

“Don’t go down there. There are monsters down there.”

Chris nodded, and let her go. She hurried toward the main doors and he keyed his radio.

“We’re gonna need creacon down here. Something’s gotten loose.” He paused. “Maybe several somethings.”

 

 

_Cas. Cas, he’s dying. I can’t feel him any more. Cas, please, please, I need you. Don’t let him die._

The blade flicked open and Sam turned, slashing at Azazel’s approaching form. In the distance, Sam could hear screams and growling. He didn’t know what had been let loose in the hallways. He thought of the slaves who had stayed in their cells, waiting silently for their master’s orders.

Azazel eyed the blade, circling cautiously to Sam’s side.

Sam couldn’t help them now.

Azazel lunged, going for the blade, and Sam slashed at him.

He might have drawn blood. There was too much of it to tell now.

The darkness was spreading across Sam’s vision. He stayed between Azazel and Dean. Holding his ground.

Cas would come.

He reached for the angel again, but all he got back was a flash of grim determination. Resignation and regret.

_The gate is closing, Sam._

Sam grit his teeth, keeping his eyes on Azazel. The other man was inching closer. He knew Sam was faltering.

 _Even if I kill him, I can’t fight what’s coming after,_ Sam pleaded. _I can’t protect him._

Azazel lunged and Sam met him halfway. He hadn’t anticipated a counterattack- his eyes went wide as Sam’s blade disappeared between two ribs.

Azazel staggered back, gasping.

_I’m sorry, Sam._

Sam’s vision filled with a flash of blue, burning out the darkness, the hallway, the dying man in front of him. He couldn’t breathe.

He dropped to his knees, gagging. His mouth tasted like blood. He was hit with a wave of vertigo and he pulled back, trying to understand what Cas was seeing.

What Cas _was,_ when he wasn’t bound to a human form.

Sam slid back into the dirty water, landing on his back, too tired to care that he was soaked and shivering. Everything hurt, but that didn’t matter now.

Cas’s light vanished, and Sam was alone.

“He made it home,” Sam told Dean.

Dean didn’t respond, and Sam let the darkness close over him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Seemed like a good chapter-stopping point. 
> 
> I think... uh.... I think there's only one or two more chapters left in this, you guys. 
> 
> Holy crap. 
> 
>  
> 
> Um.... 
> 
>  
> 
> Oh! So I saw the smol bean today. Modern medicine is amazing. We actually got a really clear picture. It looks like a baby. Like an ugly squishy baby but yeah.... it has legs. So uh... that was.... unexpectedly emotional. It's really in there. 
> 
> Getting back on topic: because someone asked: I'm self-publishing this which means after the book is out, I retain creative control and this fanfiction will stay up. I mean, by all means download a copy and put it on your kindle because the thought of people reading my crap on an honest-to-god kindle makes my meatsuit all dewey. 
> 
> Topic adjacent: Have ya'll seen the S12 trailer? The amount of gratuitous Sam!bondage is *giving me life.* 
> 
> In other news, people are *still* messaging me to tell me that the April Fool's chapter totally fooled them. I love that chapter so much. I'm so proud of myself for that. 
> 
> Um, what else... the hit count on this fic has surpassed the population of the town I live in. Thank all of you who have read it twice and wheedled your friends into reading it. Thank you everybody who left kudos, I am literally validated as a human being by the ever-increasing number of people who do that. 
> 
> That's all I've got. There's a kitten biting my elbow. Life is pretty good, right now.


	51. Chapter 51

At first, Sam would find out later, the police thought they were dead.

A lot of people down in that basement were dead- a lot of creatures, too.

It wasn’t entirely clear who had released them. Azazel had claimed responsibility for at least a few, but afterwards, the authorities would discover that some of the cages had had the locks forced open. Maybe the slaves had freed them to cover their escape, or maybe the creatures had stopped to try to help one another. Nobody ever really found out.

It took fourteen hours to clear the whole facility. The human death toll hovered around forty-five people, about a quarter of them slaves that had stayed behind rather than run. The rest were owners, caught in the middle of a variety of activities that their heirs and estates would later deny vigorously. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, none of the creatures ever made it out of the basement.

Six hours after breaching the basement doors, a team of creacon agents found three bodies laid out on the floor. They moved them to the side and were ready to leave them for the coroner, when one of them moved. Reached out and grabbed onto an agent’s wrist, staring into his eyes with a surprising amount of determination.

“Help Dean,” he’d said, before dropping back into unconsciousness.

Or at least, that’s how Sam heard the story later. He didn’t remember any of it.

He didn’t remember the EMTs loading them onto rolling gurneys or carrying them outside. He didn’t remember Victor identifying him, or Charlie rushing to his side to lay a healing poultice across the black skin of his abdomen.

They’d visit him later, with news. Updates.

Fifteen minutes into the raid, the crowd outside had gone into an uproar as twenty-two people simultaneously clutched at their throats and collapsed. They were dead before they hit the ground, their veins burning a dull red in the morning gloom.

Sam figured Cas had been right about the bond magic, then.

Castiel himself was nowhere to be found.

Sam had asked about the room Ellen directed him to. He had to make several long phone calls on the topic, but in the end, he got the report from the officers that had cleared it.

The room, they said, had been trashed and empty. No gate, no angel, no creatures, nothing. Just a lot of blood and five silver bangles, lying forgotten on the wet carpet.

Sam had thanked them and hung up.

He’d sunk back into the chair and listened to the beeping of the monitors and resisted the urge to hurl the phone into the wall.

Cas was gone.

 

That had been six days ago.  

 

Sam was not improving, in the meantime.

He knew it, the nurses who kept coming to check on him knew it, hell, even the other slaves knew it.

The whole wing was full of them, three or four to a room, while they recovered and the authorities tried to figure out what to do with them. They’d been seized as evidence, but almost immediately there had been an injunction filed by the Minnesota Civil Liberty Union (on behalf of the local members of the Slave Autonomy movement) seeking to invalidate their indentured status. They’d petitioned the government to void their contracts on the grounds of negligence and gross violation of terms.

Sam wished them luck with that.

He listened when Ellen came in to talk to him, and that’s mostly what she talked about. They didn’t talk about the place they had been, or what had happened there. Ellen didn’t ask him to get off the floor. She sat in the chair to Dean’s side, and talked to Sam as though it were perfectly normal for him to be kneeling at the foot of the bed.

Keeping vigil, is how Sam thought of it. For when Dean woke up.

 

It was very quiet, inside his head.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d become acclimated to the presence of other people, until they were gone. He still reached for Dean. He listened for Cas.

But it was all silence.  

 

The nurses weren’t sure what to do with him.

They came in every few hours, to change the IV or check the catheter or move Dean around so he wouldn’t get bedsores. They tried to check on Sam, too, but he waved them off.

Before she’d gone home to Salina, Charlie had made a set of poultices ,which she made Sam promise to use. They’d helped his body heal faster- the letters on his chest and back were now the puffy red of a year’s healing, rather than a week- but they couldn’t heal him completely. The words would always be there- fading by the year, but never gone.

Sam thought maybe that was alright. He’d taken the jewelry out, but he thought maybe it was best if the words stayed.

Maybe if Dean had known, that day at the market, he’d have walked past.

He wouldn’t be lying here now, surrounded by tubes and monitors.

 _Damaged goods,_ he told Dean. _Good for no one._

Dean didn’t respond.    

 

The other slaves brought things. They didn’t come in, didn’t dare. But as the story spread, things started appearing by the door. Drawings. Bread rolls. Notes. Little cups of pudding or jello. Pills, sometimes, until the nurses realized what was happening.

Sam collected them from the hallway, and brought them to Dean. He made a little pile of things by the side of the bed, so Dean would see them when he woke up.

Dean did not wake up.  

 

After eight days, someone came to talk to Sam about long-term care.

Dean might not wake up for a long time, they said. He might not wake up at all.

Sam knelt silently by the foot of the bed, watching.

Dean didn’t have power of attorney, they said. Sam had the opportunity to influence what happened, but at the end of the day, Dean couldn’t stay in the hospital.

They left him pamphlets, which he didn’t look at. Whoever was making decisions for Dean now, it couldn’t be him. Anyone was better than him.

 

Time passed inconsistently, fast then slow.

Sam thought he was probably sleeping more than he used to. His dreams were his own, and he’d awaken to silence and the sound of monitors beeping.

One of the nurses bullied him back into his own bed. She was concerned that he’d re-opened something, that he was bleeding into his abdominal cavity again.

When she left, he went back to Dean.

 

After ten days, they sent a grief counselor. She told Sam that loss was a natural part of life. She said that he needed to focus on moving forward. On going back to his normal life, without Dean.

Sam was too tired to laugh.

The counselor wanted to know when he’d eaten last. She sounded worried.

Sam hadn’t thought about it.

Turkey sandwich, he decided at last. The taste made him sick. He hadn’t been hungry since then. He didn’t tell the counselor this. He didn’t want anyone coming in here to force food down his throat.

Dean was getting his meals through an IV. Because of Sam.

 _I wish you’d never bought me,_ Sam told him. _They’d have sent me to a work camp and it would be me dying, not you._

Dean didn’t answer. Eventually, the counselor went away.

 

 

On the twelfth night, Sam dreamed of light.

_Hello, Sam._

Sam relaxed, letting himself smile.

_Hey Cas._

He had this dream a lot, he knew. It was second only to the one where Dean was awake again.

_Where are you?_

_Still at the hospital,_ Sam answered. _Waiting for Dean to wake up._

The dream-Cas nodded. He looked bigger, in Sam’s mind. His wings spread from his back in a wash of golden light.

 _Is this what you look like?_ Sam asked. _Back in your own world?_

Castiel smiled. He reached for Sam, drawing him close, stroking his hair back. Sam let his forehead rest against Cas’s shoulder. He didn’t trust himself to embrace the angel.

 _Dean’s dying,_ Sam said quietly. His throat felt tight. He hadn’t said it out loud, not yet.

 _I know,_ Castiel answered. His wings were warm, circling around Sam’s shoulders. _I’m sorry._

_I can’t help him._

_No,_ Cas agreed, and Sam felt something break inside him. He put his arms around Cas, his shoulders hitching as he started to cry.

_What do I do, Cas?_

Castiel waited a moment, then pressed his lips to the top of Sam’s head.

_Wait for me._

 

It wasn’t a dream, Sam insisted. He insisted to Ellen, he insisted to the nurses, he insisted to the grief counselor when she came back.

It wasn’t a dream.

 

Two days after that, the counselor came back with a pair of orderlies. She was worried about Sam’s mental state and it had been decided that he would benefit from medical intervention.

Sam locked his arms around the foot of the bed and swore on his life that he was going nowhere.

The counselor said she understood, that it was difficult to move on from a life in which someone else figured prominently. She said lots of people thought they couldn’t cope, and many of them clung to the expectation that their loved one would return. It wasn’t realistic, she told him, and that’s when Cas appeared in the doorway.  

The angel looked different, a little bit. The angle of his jaw, the length of his hair, the set of his shoulders. His skin was slightly darker, and the black etchings of his wings wrapped around his shoulders and down his arms. Sam’s mark was gone from his chest, and Dean’s from his arm.

He was also completely naked.

“Hello, Sam.”

Sam relaxed, letting his head rest against the footboard.

“Hey, Cas.”

The angel tilted his head.

“You do not look well.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Cas crossed the rom in silence, passing the counselor and the orderlies without acknowledgement. They gaped at him, but didn’t comment. He knelt in front of Sam, reaching out to stroke his fingers across the other man’s cheek.

“They’ve marked you again,” Cas noted. Sam looked away.

“It’s a warning. So people know to stay away from me.”

“Hmm,” Cas answered. “May I take it away?”

Sam waved him off.

“Don’t bother with me. Dean needs you.”

“Dean can sleep another few minutes.” Castiel looked up into Sam’s eyes. “It hurt him terribly, to see what they did to you.”

“I know.”

Sam glanced toward the bed.

“They’re an apology. So when he wakes up, he knows I’ve been punished for lying to him.”

“Would he punish you that way? If he were awake?”

Sam paused, then shook his head.

“You must decide, then,” Castiel murmured, “whether you hate yourself more than he loves you.”

“I need to pay for this,” Sam protested. Castiel’s light was filling his mind now, bright and blue, burning away the darkness that had followed him since he’d woken up here.

“Sam, you have paid for a hundredfold more wrongs than you have ever committed. Dean wasn’t angry that you lied. He was angry that they’d hurt you. And he was angry that you thought you should let them.”

For the second time, Sam let his forehead rest on Cas’s shoulder. The angel’s arms encircled him, and when Sam reached out, he could feel the bond there, thrumming with life.

“If you care for my opinion,” Castiel told him, turning his head to whisper in Sam’s ear, “I’d want to see you unmarred, your skin as perfect as your soul.”

“Take them away then,” Sam said quietly. “Just let him wake up.”  

Castiel sighed, and Sam felt cold prickles radiating from the angel’s fingers.

 

 

Dean opened his eyes, and was instantly alert.

The ceiling didn’t look like the ceiling he’d been staring at when he passed out. It was dry, for one thing.

He sat up, looking around the room. Three strangers were staring at him in barely-disguised shock. Sam was by the foot of the bed, dressed in a plain t-shirt, and looking significantly more haggard than Dean remembered.

And then there was Cas, standing with his fingers resting gently on Dean’s bicep, looking utterly comfortable with the fact that he was naked.

Dean blinked, shifting minutely in bed.

“Uh… how long was I out?”

“Two weeks,” Sam answered immediately. He looked like he was about to cry.

Dean reached for him through the bond, almost reflexively, looking to stem the waves of pain coming off the younger man.

Sam smiled, dropping his eyes and waving him off.

“Not to be that guy,” Dean said, shifting again, “but can somebody call me a nurse? Because, I feel like I’ve got a tube in my dick and it’s way too early for that.”

One of the strangers stammered and left the room, trying not to make eye contact as he did. The other two followed after, mumbling sheepishly about giving them a moment.

“They didn’t think you were coming back,” Sam explained. He was grinning openly now, wiping at his eyes as he talked. “I kept telling them, but no one believed me.”

Now it was Cas’s turn to look down.

“I apologize for that. My vessel was destroyed when I went through the gate- I had to rebuild it from scratch.”

“Oh!” Dean said, sitting up fully now. “What happened? Everything after I got shot.”

Castiel frowned.

“There was some kind of creature waiting by the gate. I don’t know what it was- I do know that it didn’t belong anywhere near humans. I think maybe the Hellfires were meddling in worlds other than mine. It very nearly stopped me from finishing the spell- I could only kill it by holding tight and forcing both of us through the gate. I succeeded in disintegrating the creature, but it cost me my vessel.”

“You don’t need it on the other side, though, right?” Sam asked.

“I need it on this side,” Castiel answered simply. Dean frowned.

“So then, what, you kept the gate from closing so you’d have time to rebuild your vessel?”

Castiel fixed him with a stare.

“The gate is closed,” he said levelly. “I don’t think it will be possible to re-open it from this side.”

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again. Castiel was still staring at him, the implications of his words clear in his head.

“You stayed to save my life,” he said quietly. “Jesus, Cas…”

“I’ve grown fond of you,” the angel said with a shrug.

Anything Dean might have said in response was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor, who came in very much surprised to see that her patient was not only conscious, but actually speaking in full sentences.

There had been, Dean gathered, quite a bit of brain damage.

Something about a massive amount of blood loss and blunt force trauma to the head, probably from when he fell.

Someone got Castiel a hospital gown, which he stared at in distaste until they caved and brought him a pair of scrubs from somewhere. These he regarded with slightly less contempt, and was eventually persuaded to wear.

There were a deeply uncomfortable number of tubes to remove from Dean’s body, and he tried to joke his way through it and not think too closely about how he’d nearly spent the rest of his life in that bed.

The doctor did a thorough physical, checking Dean’s vitals again and again, like she didn’t believe what she was seeing. She tried to check the wound, too, but when Dean lifted up the gown, it was gone. Entry and exit both.

Like it had never happened.

 

It was four hours before Dean could convince anyone he was ready to leave, and by that point, he was about ready to have Cas just draw him a door. To anywhere.

The Impala had been put in long term parking at the hospital, courtesy of the Bemidji police department. Sam had already gone through Dean’s duffel and brought him a set of clean clothes.

“For when you woke up,” Sam explained, and Dean didn’t like the hollow edge his voice took on when he said it.

 

The hallway was full of people- silent, wide-eyed people. Dean froze in the doorway, looking out across the crowd with more than a little apprehension.

“Sam?”

“The other slaves,” Sam explained. “They’re glad you’re awake.”

Dean nodded, silently, then gave them a little wave.

“Hi,” he said weakly. He wasn’t used to being stared at.

Castiel pushed past him, out the door, and the crowd moved back as a unit, letting him pass. Some of them reached out to touch him as he walked by, their fingertips resting lightly against the black feather marks on his arms.

Dean followed, keeping his head down. He was glad he had Sam at his back.

Someone began to hum, and the others must have known the song, because they picked it up quickly.

The three of them reached the elevator, and Dean turned back to look at them. They smiled back at him, and the doors slid shut on the sound of singing.  

 

 

_Epilogue_

_Eighteen months later_

 

 

“Dude, come see this. The guy built a helicopter out of a dead cat.”

Sam scowled from his place at the kitchen table.

“I’m trying to study. Anyway, I saw it.”

“How does that even happen in someone’s head?” Dean mused, ignoring the other man. “How do you look at a dead cat and think ‘man, this needs to fly’?”

“Maybe he’s a case,” Sam answered, not looking up from his textbook.

Dean groaned, rolling off the couch and going to stand behind him.

“Give it a rest, you know that crap forward and backwards. You’re gonna strain something if you keep staring at it.”

He leaned down, pressing a kiss to the side of Sam’s throat.

“Let’s do something fun.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Sam muttered, but Dean could hear the smile in his voice. Dean closed his eyes and focused, sending Sam images of massage oils and candles and this nifty nubby little back massager they’d gotten-

“The exam is in three days,” Sam griped. “I’m never going to be a hunter if I can’t get the damn phylum straight.”

“You’re going to be a hunter either way,” Dean assured him, kissing his way down Sam’s shoulder. He sent an image of Sam, from behind, pulling his shirt over his head.

Sam sent him back a picture of himself, locked in the woodshed. Dean laughed.

“Stop worrying.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“No.”

They were interrupted by a crash from the living room as Cas stumbled across the floor, hitting the edge of the couch and almost going down. Sam was on his feet in a second, rushing to the angel’s side.

“You okay?”

Castiel shook his head, laughing.

“Misjudged the difference in velocity. It was a large jump.”

“And how is Australia this time of year?” Dean asked, watching Sam check Cas over for damage.

“Hot,” the angel answered simply. “Dry. Filled with things that bite. Very beautiful, though.”

“This isn’t healing, Cas,” Sam interrupted. Castiel looked down, noting the tiny cut on the back of one hand.

“I think I’ll survive, Sam.”

“You need to stop going so long between transfers,” Sam insisted. He sat down on the couch, pulling Cas on top of him so the angel was straddling his hips. Castiel looked like he was going to protest, but Sam pulled him into a deep kiss before he could get the words out. Dean could see the sparks of energy as their lips met. The cut on Cas’s hand glowed with a pale amber light, and then vanished.

“Oh, sure, you’ll quit studying for _him,_ ” Dean groused, but his heart wasn’t in it. Even after all this time, there was something about seeing the two of them together that never failed to make him smile.

Cas pulled back, and Sam blinked sleepily up at him. Dean laughed.

“C’mon, sleeping beauty, let’s get you to bed before you pass out on the couch.”

Dean went to help him up, but Cas beat him to it, lifting the other man easily and carrying him into the bedroom.

“The romance isn’t dead yet!” Dean called after them. Sam grumbled something he didn’t catch.

A few minutes later, Cas reappeared in the doorway.

“He’s asleep.”

“He’s right, you know,” Dean answered. “You need to stop going so long between transfers. You’re cut off from your home world- all you’ve got is us, now.”

Castiel shrugged, avoiding his eyes.

“I forget. There is a lot of this world to see, and I am suddenly in a hurry to see it.”

Dean didn’t follow that topic of discussion. They’d been over this before.

Cas looked back at him.

“I don’t regret it, you know. Staying here, with you.”

Dean nodded. He knew that, too. The angel had never said it; he didn’t need to. One of the great benefits of mind reading.

“Speaking of mind reading,” Castiel said casually, sidling up beside Dean, “I believe you and Sam were saying something about massage oil, before I showed up?”

“You are the _worst_ angel,” Dean laughed, leaning down to kiss him.

“But I’m yours,” Cas answered, and Dean had no argument with that.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.... it's done. 
> 
> That's all there is, folks. 
> 
> Time to start the rewrite, I guess. 
> 
> So, before I do that, I want to give a big 'thank you' to everyone who kudo'd, commented, asked questions, pointed out mistakes, made predictions, or basically interacted with me on this fic in any manner whatsoever. You guys made this happen. If it weren't for your constant feedback I would have gotten bored with this months ago and it would be One More Thing Hazel Never Finished. 
> 
> I'll put up another chapter when the book is published, so if you want a notification on that, whack the 'subscribe' button up top and you'll get notified when that happens. You can also keep an eye on hazeldomain.tumblr.com, though that route is gonna be full of baby updates and feminist rants. Fair warning. 
> 
> On this, the final chapter, I'd like to extend an invitation to everyone who Saw Something but didn't want to Say Anything: I think I wrapped up all the loose ends, I think I explained everything, I think everything made sense- but I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. If there was something that wasn't clear or if there are any logic holes or plot gremlins, please let me know now, before I canonize it on paper.


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